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Class 
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Gopyriglitm 



CQFUUGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TREES 



The 
Garden of Seven Trees 

By 
Bennett Weaver 

With a Foreword by William Johnston 




The Cornhill Publishing Company 
Boston 






Copyright, 1921 
THE CORNHILL PUBLISHING COMPANY 



OCIA654228 



DEC 29 1921 



/^\i> j 



f- 



TO MY WIFE 



FOREWORD 

To mention only four of the short poems in the 
present volume, one who can achieve pieces as 
unhke and as successful as Remembering ("Is it 
the scent of the cedar bower?"), The Candle^ 
Gypsy Glen and Boughs of May deserves the name 
of poet. The first named has rare delicacy of 
thought, and it combines with this a felicity of 
meter and a loveliness of half-concealed rhymes 
which are in perfect harmony with it. The 
Candle is vivid in its picture-forming power. It 
is the kind of conception in which emotion is 
made frozen and static through its own intensity. 
Gypsy Glen is a poem of deep and true emotion. 
It is undoubtedly the voice of the heart, though 
the other two poems may be the product of the 
poetic and dramatic imagination. As to Boughs 
of May, there is to me something alluring in its 
irregular but smooth movement and in its psychol- 
ogy of the mind, unhinged by grief, which speaks 
of "black-eyed song," which thinks of the stars 
as "blood-buds," and which tries to forget the 
tomb beneath the moon in a despairing belief 
that the loved one is not dead: 

"Oh, it's joy to be a-going 
And I've worn the pathway true, 
Joy» joy to be a-going 
Back to you — 

An apple bough hung straight 
against the moon!" 

vii 



Foreword 



Having named these four pieces as introduc- 
tory examples of Mr. Weaver's poetic gift, I wish 
to mention the qualities from which the reader 
will, I believe, derive the chief pleasure that will 
be given him by this volume. First in order, 
though not in importance, I would place Mr. 
Weaver's intense and individual love of the beau- 
tiful. 

"a heart whose flame 
Was busy round the beauty of the world," 

from his poem Age, would well characterize the 
poet himself. 

To some degree we judge the poet by his suc- 
cess in catching those elements of beauty which 
are common to all true poets; in some degree we 
judge him by the distinctive and original man- 
ner in which he detects, in the world and in the 
imagination, elements of beauty which other 
poets have not so clearly seen or reproduced. I 
find in the work of Mr. Weaver an attractive 
and original note of imaginative loveliness. I 
find this in the sea of gold and the sand of silver 
of the lyric. Lost, in its white sail cutting a white 
moon, and in the flashing suggestiveness of 

"One soul to the moon on the waters, 
And one, home." 

I find it, likewise, in the wistful sweetness of 
The Dim Water and The Moon Was White; it 
flashes upon me from poem after poem. Some- 
times it reveals itself in a vision of an idealized 
or romanticized world, for the flame of this 
poet's heart is often busy round a world which 

viii 



Foreword 



is not of this earth, and I am certain that there 
are many who can admire the most reaUstic of 
the Chicago poems of Carl Sandburg, for instance, 
and can as much admire those of Mr. Weaver's 
poems which have the background of a roman- 
ticized world. I think that Sandburg himself 
will recognize the high poetic qualities of the 
latter. He will recognize the validity, for some 
writers at least, of Mr. Weaver's theory of the 
two worlds, for from childhood our poet has 
lived busily and laboriously in the real world 
and eagerly and intensely in the dream world. 
He trusts life, but at times he must enter into 
his closet and shut the door. Then he hears the 
voices that make no sound. Then he plucks 
lilies from the sky and flame from the water. If 
is from this world that he finds much of his finest 
and most typical poetry, and I think that it is 
this world which is the object of his best love. 

A second characteristic of Mr. Weaver's verse, 
and that in which I consider it most noteworthy 
and most deserving of praise, is its high imagina- 
tive quality. Sometimes, as in Under a Rose, 
his imagination takes the lighter form of fancy, 
playing with its fancy rather than gripped by it — 

"Living and dying, 
My heart and the rose." 

but usually it is imagination in its higher form. 
Mr. Weaver is successful in the imaginative reali- 
zation of emotion, and I know of no living poet 
who surpasses him in that imaginative realiza- 
tion of likeness which springs from emotion and 
expresses itself in figures of speech : 



Foreword 



"now shadows form, and, dimly great, 
Huge-shouldered things press at the hills." 

"The water of the storm is bitter upon the pane; 
Night goes against the stars like black acid, 

or, more simply, 

"The mouldering garth-fence, level to the feet 
of the intruder wind." 

"the shadows lie 
Hard on the heart I love the best." 

or, of a dead child, 

"he left his play 
And made no track on his white way to sleep." 

Such visualization of emotion as is found in 
figures like these, which are taken almost at 
random, is of the very essence of poetry. For a 
longer passage I quote from Mar sea: 

"You sat 
On a high place, a windy sun 
Coronal round you. Over the white 
Of your shoulder a bronze-dim harp 
Curved its wild throat. Your hand wrought 
Gleaming upon the gleaming strings, 
Unweaving long tresses of music 
Which darted and flashed down the wind." 

It will be worth the reader's while to analyze the 
complex pictorial suggestiveness and the sweep- 
ing ligurativeness of the passage. 



Foreword 



The third element of the work of Mr. Weaver 
to which I would refer is his originality. I say 
this in spite of my belief that some readers will 
criticiTie his poetry on the ground that it seems 
at times to echo that of other writers. In two 
pieces one can doubtless detect "faint Tenny- 
sonian echoes, nothing worth," and certainly no 
one will fail to catch some re\'erl:)erations that 
are of Belgian origin. There are a few lines 
reminiscent of Keats, of Poe, of Milton. Un- 
questionably Marsea has affinities with certain 
other plays, affinities in characters, in setting, in 
atmosphere, and in mood. Even more perhaps 
may be said of The Seekers, jet I do not hesitate 
to say that the author of the present volume may 
fairly be considered a decidedly original poet. 
He is unlike some of our contemporary poets in 
that the essence of his originality is too subtle to 
be caught in the net of a definition, yet it is vital. 
It is as elusive as personality itself, yet as dis- 
tinct. It is pervasive rather than concentrated, 
and it reflects a definitely individual attitude 
toward life. This attitude has nothing of the 
journalistic, and it is not mere novelty. It is es- 
sentially poetic, and it gives a distinctive and a 
very attractive quality to the majority of the 
poems in the volume. It is revealed more by 
suggestion and by haunting melody than by 
direct statement. It is involved not only in 
word and phrase or in picture and image, but in 
that harmony of the whole which makes a true 
poem much more than equal to the sum of its 
parts. Yet I by no means intend to intimate 
that it is never shown in newness of subject 



XI 



Foreword 



matter. And of one thing I am certain : this poet 
is a sincere and conscientious artist; he will do 
the thing in the way which he thinks right 
rather than in the way which others may think 
new. The originality is not part of a make-up, 
but part of the man. Consequently, it will more 
and more reveal itself outwardly and it will not 
be subject to sudden change. 

Though the three qualities which I have named 
seem to me to be those in which Mr. Weaver 
shows most distinction, they are supported by 
many others. The reader will find evidence of a 
mind logical as well as imaginative, and will dis- 
cover that this poet's tendency to idealize does 
not by any means exclude accuracy of observation. 
He will find some interesting psychology in the 
poems, one example being Marsea. This is a 
poetical drama which should succeed upon the 
stage of some of the best of our little theaters. 
The two characters of the drama proper are equal 
in loveliness but unequal in strength, and the 
play is a poetic embodiment of the idea that 
when two personalities meet, each attempts, 
consciously or unconsciously, to absorb, to ap- 
propriate, to consume the other. The rapture of 
such absorption, the beauty of it, the recog- 
nition by the weaker of the fearful danger of it, 
are the motive of the poem — 

"Beauty 
Is blood . . . 

... It was you who taught 
Me truth and you who taught of beauty. 
And you consumed me!" 

xii 



Foreword 



Of Mr. Weaver's success as a narrative poet 
the present volume affords the reader but one 
example by which to form an opinion. Alladine 
is from several points of view an interesting 
poem, one in which many readers will find much 
to enjoy. I heard the author read it in a certain 
gusty lane one autumn afternoon, and found it 
delightful. The owl that sat all night at Alia- 
dine's casement 

"Snipping the bones of a lesser bird" 

seemed very owlish, midnightish and malignant; 
and the song of the while winds gave a subtly 
lyrical effect. The idea of a girl whose pride in 
her voice led to the plan for robbing all the 
nightingales of the tips of their tongues im- 
pressed me as a good point of departure for build- 
ing up the simple but sufficient plot of the poem. 
Naturally, the Earl's daughter must suffer for 
her selfishness: 

"Then Alladine lifts up her eye. 
All in the forest at midnight hour, 
And the mists like loung-sloughed viper skins 
Are coiled round the dead men dancing there. 



'And ye must sing,' the whisper wails, 
'Sing to the forest made dumb for thee.' " 

When she sings, then 

"Down sink the tarn-men in the mere; 
The coiled mists thin and fail to go; 

xiii 



Foreword 



And the great owl buffets the night with wings 
That are full of flight and windy fear; 
And the moon sweeps up, and the nightingales 
Burst from the bough in chorus full." 

Of The Garden of Seven Trees as representative 
of Mr. Weaver's thought about human life and 
destiny much could be said. Likewise, could 
much be said of the plan and the setting of this 
philosophic drama and of its value as showing 
what power the author possesses as a creative 
artist. I think that it may find fewer admirers 
than many of the other poems, but that the ad- 
miration of some readers will be sincere and deep. 
The poem has served to deepen in me the general 
impression which a reading of all of the poems of 
the volume has made. That impression is this: 
Mr. Weaver is a true poet. He comes offering a 
genuine gift of imaginative beauty. Though his 
poetry may not make an impression of extreme 
novelty, it is original and distinctive. His work 
will be a source of keen enjoyment to all who are 
alive to the most characteristic sources of poetic 
pleasure, and from some of the poems the kind of 
pleasure derived will be found intimately con- 
nected with the deepest part of our complex 
inner life. 

WILLIAM JOHNSTON. 

Lake McDonald, Montana. 
September 10, 1920. 



XIV 



CONTENTS 
I. 

Lost 5 

To 5 

Victima 6 

The Death Task 7 

Sixes and Sevens 8 

Silence 12 

II. 

To C. W. W 15 

Two Sonnet Songs 15 

Aspen Shadow 17 

A Sonnet 17 

Oh, Lovely One 18 

On the Pier 19 

A Rondeau 21 

Out of Sleep 21 

Sonnet 23 

A Graveyard 23 

Gipsy Glen 25 

Eighty Days 30 

Sonnet ("Come now your night-shade") ... 32 

Lo, Anywhere 32 

Two Poems on the Separation 33 

A Marsh Song 34 

Thou Lovely Star 35 

Under a Rose 37 

Ave Verum 38 

Boughs of May 39 

XV 



Confenis 



III. 

Mortling 43 

Fever 44 

The Ghost 46 

November Wind 47 

Earth 48 

Three Men 48 

Age and Youth 50 

Lines on Beauty 52 

Conjecture 53 

Ah, Sappho 55 

Snow Musk 55 

The Snows 56 

By an Evolutionist 57 

The Moon Was White 58 

The Dim Water 58 

Himerius to Sappho 59 

A Song 60 

Blue Birds 61 

A Sonnet in blank verse to — 61 

Rocks 62 

Lintels of the Sun 66 

Sonnet To— 67 

The Candle 68 

Two Triolets 69 

Remembering 70 

Dead 72 

To— 73 

Marsea 77 

Alladine 95 

The Seekers 123 

The Garden 9f Seven Trees 151 

Sonnet 183 



XVI 



THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TREES 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



LOST 

The creep of the gold sea 
Up the silver of the sand, 

A white sail cutting the white moon, 
A cry from land. 

The long path over the moor, 
A pale path away from the foam. 

One soul to the moon on the waters, 
And one, home. 



TO 



I could not think, so loud he sang. 
That Silence ever could come here, 
Silence and dreadful eating Fear, 

Grief with her low remorseful pang. 

I could not think, so tenderly 
He stooped to whisper unto me. 
Of night grown lonely after day. 
Of day more black than night alway. 
5 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I could not think this Hfe were sweet 
And worth the living to the end. 

Did I not think our ways should meet, 
And he once more would call me friend. 



11 

The brook crawled blackening to the light, 
A black cloud crawled across the star. 
The moon hung like a saffron scar 

Upon the mad face of the night. 

The wind yelled out and beat the tree 
Down, down to sob of him to me; 
Frost-poisoned grass blades slashed my face 
Bent low in one wild prayer for grace. 

For grace to love him still the same 
Who laughs against another's cheek, 

Nor knows no more my house nor name, 
Nor the lone ways that I must seek. 



VICTIMA 

There is no harder thing than this: 
To speak of death to one you love; 

To hold the hand you soon will miss 
While all your years more slowly move; 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



To say good-bye at evening time 
And face the empty night alone, 

While stars you've named togetlier climb 
Along the slow wind's path of moan; 

To lie upon your couch while sleep 
Dazzles your sense before its fall; 

To hear a calling from the deep, 
And from the night to hear a call. 

The sunset boat moves out to sea. 
The wind fills well and blows away; 

But this broad shore is strange to me, 

And strange the night and strange the day. 



THE DEATH TASK 

I said, "This sweet deceiving thing 
That we call life, were better done. 

All beauty rests her glorious wing 
In dust. Beneath the going sun. 

Frail, fair things die and good things cease, 
Love's tender tumult slowly fails, 

And on the shore, apart from peace. 
We ever watch the outgoing sails." 

7 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



But now, to-night, beside the form 
That was so beautiful and dear, 

A soft voice whispers thru the storm, 
And pain is cooled and thought and fear. 

The darkness gently falls apart 
Across a light and pleasant way; 

I know Life's hand upon my heart, 
And Death kneels kindly near to pray. 



SIXES AND SEVENS 

SIX 

Ten thousand links of gold and iron and lead 
Were quarried from the heart of God by past 
Eternities to chain my soul. And men. 
Ten thousand thousand, by the forges, dead. 
Grey bone by ashen steel, have wrought and cast 
My destiny. I am what they were then. 

My habits are their tendencies. I live 
Their dreams. From seed a million aeons sown 
I reap a harvest that is not my own. 
The graneries of Thebes and Ipsambool 
Were empty still when all my life was full. 
And life for me has nothing more to give. 
8 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I am the host of ages, and my heart 
The food of mummied mouths. My being, aye, 
My self, my soul, is but the perfumed breath 
Of those who live in me beyond their death. 
Oh, what is man? And what, indeed, am I? 
A hope, a fever, come but to depart! 

In Adam all men lived. We all have died 
Before our birth. Life came to us as dreams 
In death, called, and the echo but replied. 
We are but drops in myriad branched streams 
That swelled to movement from God's lonely tear; 
And ours is but to go, to move, to fear. 

Our death is common and our brotherhood 
Is deep as life. Your good is still my good. 
I share your food, your dress, your shelter, and 
Your being. You have nothing private tho 
You dig to hide the thing. The grave's in land 
We own together. Life is one. You go, 

I come, but age and life remain. 'Tis true, 
Were all men put in one there yet would be 
But one, and he with no more power to see, 
To feel, to live than each has now. Go, do 
Thy mightiest deed, contend in bravest strife. 
You can not mark eternity or life ! 
9 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Man's pride and glory still must be to wear 
His chains like ornaments; to keep, not share 
His task; to live with courage; to endure, 
Self-mastered, self-sufficient, self-secure. 
He who is king of self is thrice crowned king 
Of all that the eternities can bring. 

SEVEN 

I come now to this granite jaw of rock, 
Which, beast-like, champs the waves in frothy rage. 
Sunk is the sun in sudden dark. No glow 
Of light remains. Above the shore-long shock 
Of plunging tides, the heavy winds presage 
Tumult and doom and night. The sea curves slow 

Its back into the sky and lunges full 
And furious at the shore. Its white tusks pull 
Bases from tottering cliffs and grind and roar 
Like thunder chained to some Caucasian hill. 
This is the end, the end, and nevermore 
Shall I lie down and rest and tajke my fill. 

Sunk are the singing streams. The birds have flown 
Thru olden sunsets and the flowers are dead. 
The happy heart, the cool, bare flesh upon 
The grass, the dreams, the songs, and all I own 
As good, they, too, have fainted, feared, and fled. 
Fled like fall birds are joys before the dawn 
10 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Of the eternal winter in my soul. 

Is this the age and wisdom for which I 

Have spent my youth and spirit? This the end 

Of that flowered path whereon I still did bend 

My longing footstep onward? Why, oh, why? 

Is not the pathway better than the goal? 

Night sweeps her finger o'er the page of life 
And blots the whole. The guttered candle flame 
She puffs upon — infinite darkness snaps 
Across eternity! Youth sucks and laps 
At knowledge, age retains, death drops — a name 
Upon a stone, and nothing of the strife ! 

What purpose is in life? Love man, love God? 
Increase and multiply? God needs not love, 
Man needs not life. Why should an animate clod 
Beneath the disc, the harrow, look above 
Toward the sun, because some wind-blown seed 
Has fallen where life's heart began to bleed? 

All paths must end and some end by the sea, 
And this my path is ended now for me. 
I walked the way, I asked of none to ride, 
And now I feel the swelling of the tide. 
On this raw rock I gladly lay me down, 
My head unbraced, unfettered by a crown. 
11 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



SILENCE 

There was a silence. 

As if sleep were stroking a mouldy bell, 

As if death were closing his wing in mist, 

A great silence. 

And it covered all the world. 

I could hear the dew 

Slipping from the grass blades, 

Nestling in the cobwebs of the world. 

And in all strange places 

There were strange silences: 

Silence as of a lark sleeping, 

As of lambs thrusting their noses into wool, 

As of men making anthems on a peak, 

As of God moving His great eyes. 

My soul was full of trembling, 
Like the beam of a little star. 
Smitten with tempest. 



12 



11 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



TO C. C. W. 

If I might sing no more, 

Nor nevermore 

In morning song voice my full soul, 

If but one song I had 

Of all songs yet to sing, 

I'd spend it with a full heart 

Praising you, 

Companion of my gentle, nearer hours, 

My quiet close to God. 



TWO SONNET SONGS 
I 

The young leaf comes unto the willow tree. 
The young lark in the meadow beats her wing ; 

Low on the circling hills of mystery 

There pants the bosom of the maiden Spring. 

Fair form, in crocus and aenemone 

Woven with golden sun, the dewy hour 

Of Morning draws from you her jubilee, 

And Evening passions with your master power. 
15 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Not so with me that feed on human breath, 
And know the Autumn that must freeze along 

The human beauty of our bhnded hfe. 
You grieve me deepher than the Winter wrong 

Which makes a nothing out of all our strife. 

And fastens all our little ways in Death. 



II 

You do me wrong, you little birds, to play. 
You do me wrong, you little birds, to sing: 

"Your true love sleeps a far and far away; 

What message shall we from your true love 
bring?" 

Ah, what would such as you with burdening love 
To weight your little breasts and break your 
wing? 
For you would fall and perish there above 
The thorn wastes, you would perish with the 
thing ! 

Or if you still would serve me, swiftly fly 
And build your happiness about her there, 

And twitter nothing how my heart would die 
Of lonely grief and agonized despair: 

Build round her fortress joys in carol sweet. 

And lay my sad soul dumbly at her feet. 
16 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



ASPEN SHADOW 

Roses in the shadow, 

In the aspen shadow, roses. 

Spirit-still the night that closes 

Round us, sweet-heart, 

Here within the aspen shadow 

And among the roses. 

Music, music, memory, 

In the shadow come to me; 

Rose of life, you come to me, 

You, my sweet-heart. 

Here within the aspen shadow, 

Here among the roses. 



A SONNET 

Even if those quiet eyes turn not the way 
My fancy, haunted by the joy of years, 
Shall wander; even if those tender ears. 
Too pleasured with the common things I say, 
Heed not the unwavering music of my lay 
Clear sung, of faith the silver note, of love 
The golden chord; yet shall my soul above 
All sorrow, be content to hope and pray. 
17 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



For song has yet companionship divine 

Within itself, and he who in his heart 

Has music, has all earth and heaven beside. 

Ah, who shall thumb and touch the secret, fine 

Estrangement of that dumbly aching part 

Of elsewise perfect love, which, longing, died? 



OH, LOVELY ONE 

Oh, lovely one among the flowers, 

I can not sing ! 

The melancholy hours 

Are on my heart; 

I perish in the sight of you, most fair. 

It is the woe of all the world, beloved, 

It is the woe of all the world 

That covers me, 

And even you, beloved, can not save my soul. 

The moon in her high place is bright. 
Is bright among her stars ; 
The night 

Is all about me, lovely and serene. 
And yet again the dumbness of my heart ! 
Even that you are near, so utter dumb 
With wonder 

And the grief, the grief that will not spare my 
soul. 

18 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I have heard youth in pain, 

And old age groan : 

I shall not hear again 

Your voice, my love, 

But I shall think of all the woeful world. 

The woe of all the world from youth to age. 

You are so beautiful that I must die. 

Oh, lovely one. 

The melancholy hours are on my heart! 



ON THE PIER 



That evening I huddled in the mist 
That clung upon the bosom of the sea; 
I felt you come, I knew that we had kist; 
But all about the living mystery 
Folded me from the shore, and I alone. 
Oh, love, from those old deeps what was the groan 
That sounded till the waters shook apart. 
Revealed the hidden? Love, love, upon my heart 
Make me my answer and so let me sleep! 
You were so near, so beautiful, — and yet — 
What was the hidden thing within the deep? 
I ask to know it only, then forget. 
19 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



II 

And I have asked of you the secret, love, 
And all your answer is a quiet hand 
Laid on my forehead, close, and now above 
Myheart. "Ah, you are good," you say. "Theland 
Woos to the deep, so I to you. I yearn 
For you because you yearn for me. Stars burn 
For night and suns for day." "And yet," I ask, 
"For whom do night and day perform their task? 
There is some ultimate." To which you place 
Your head upon my shoulder while the night 
Goes by and spreads the mist upon your face : 
Within the mist we wait, then, for the light. 



Ill 

And it shall come mist-shrouded; for I know 
That woman's beauty has not told its truth. 
"The topless towers of Illium," the ruth 
Of nations is not written on the snow 
Of any woman's breast. There sweetened milk 
Has drawn its traceries of liquid silk 
And half disclosed an awful history 
Writ in the utter runes of mystery. 
"Ponder the plain?" It is not all so plain; 
For what I give my life to, I possess, 
And it holds me beneath its fine caress. 
And out of all come life and death and pain. 

go 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A RONDEAU 

Ten stars and ten clouds in the sky. 
And a moon like the skull of a crone. 
Oh, memory kneeling alone, 
While the winds and the clouds go by, 
While the clouds drift and the winds sigh ! 

Two castles with turrets on high, 
And owls in the turrets to cry. 
While the winds moan 
And mingle with mists on the stone. 
Ten stars in the sky. 

Two flowers in the sleep-dusk of dreams, and I 
Fearing the gleam of the wings that fly 
Thitherward, thitherward all alone. 
Two flowers nodding in hands of bone. 
Thitherward, thitherward — Let them die ! 
Ten clouds in the sky ! 



OUT OF SLEEP— 

My love, my dear one is ill ! 

The winds mewl beneath the window and sicken 

and scream; 
The water of the storm is bitter upon the pane; 
Night goes against the stars like black acid. 
21 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



My love, my dear one may pass beneath the 
high arch of the morning; 

She may go with the stars to their sleep, 

With the little white stars to their slumber: 

Whiter than these is her soul. 

Her hands are thin mist in an orchard at bloom- 
time; 

Her finger tips at my cheek are budded anemones 
in feathers of snowdrift; 

Upon the pillow her hair is cedar-fire over white 
water : 

I fear it will tempt the feet of the angels. 

Her eyes sleep; 

They are hidden under the curved petals of a 
strange flower; 

In her eyes I forgot my soul; 

If they do not open, — God and her loveliness! 

Night rushes against the stars ; 
It is bitter against the blown stars of the North. 
I hear the shadow of mighty tears at the window, 
And the wind reaching. 

I must pray against the bitterness of death. 



22 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



SONNET 

No, not tomorrow let the great lamp fail 

And love be desolate! Within the hall 

Keep Joy, the moth, feeding among the tall 

Flowers. Let music, nard-anointed, frail 

Courser of the evening quiet light, veil 

Memory with sleep that we may dream 

This thing still is. And let thy incense stream, 

Oh Power, over our couches low and pale. 

War mouths that cling with moaning while they kiss, 

Bosom to bosom struggling, — all let be ! 

Our musky passion lightens but to flee; 

Flame leaves dry ashes; Love will turn a-cold. 

The world has yet no recompense for this : 

That Life is not a thing the hand may hold. 

A GRAVEYARD 

I stood within the little yard — 
A hundred years had flown — 

And stranger names about me rose 
On many a mouldering stone. 

Here lay an infant and the one 

Who gave the infant birth, 
A hundred years, a hundred years 

Clasped in the common earth! 
23 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And here lay one whose years were sweet, 

A mute line told her tale ; 
A hundred years, a hundred years 

She slept within this vale. 

Oh, that a maiden here should lie ! 

Her bosom was like snow, 
Her eye was bright and sunny blue 

A hundred years ago. 

I wept to hear the spring-time thrush 

Sing in the hollow glen; 
I wept to think of youth, how sweet, 

How frail, even now as then! 

For one who had been near my heart 

Had drawn toward the grave 
And love had known its bitterest grief : 

It had no power to save ! 

The stones rose slanting in the sun, — 

How ancient was their woe ! 
The thrush sang gayly in the glen, 

I turned my steps to go. 

I sought her, frail and lingering sweet 

Against my bleeding heart, — 
My love, my bride, my holy one ! 

Her eyelids drew apart, 
24 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I kissed the dim light of her eyes, 
I kissed, and knew the pang 

Another felt a century gone, 
While wild glen thrushes sang. 

A century gone ! An hundred years 
And what shall my grief be? 

A wild thrush singing in a glen, 
Upon a ghostly tree ! 



GYPSY GLEN 



I left her standing at her door, and turned 
Away toward the hills. Yet was the sweet 
And awful vision of her face upon me; 
The too frail light of innocent agony 
Shone still between her laden lashes; and 
Her mouth was open like an angel's which 
Has wept a great cry thru eternity. 
Her hand lay flashing on her forehead pale. 
The delicate fingers scarce a-grip of life 
Mingling among the morning of her hair: 
Oh God, that life should leave the beautiful! 
Against the spread base of a somber hill 
Lay the low graves of some ancient in death; 
25 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A not unlovely place, and there I paused 

Beside that city where a century 

Had woven webs of old and human dream, 

Which silently had worn themselves away. 

The mouldering garth-fence, level to the feet 

Of the intruder wind, invited me 

By its own helplessness to enter there 

Where the grey stones rose slanting to the sun. 

Or lay, themselves with their sad message, lost 

Among the weedy moulds of many years. 

My foot was on the bed of stranger dust; 

But not without an agony I looked 

Along the desolations of the place. 

And strove to read the testaments of love 

Graven on time and by time's self destroyed. 

Here most imperial maidenhood had come, 

A flower upon her bosom, and to sleep ! 

And here sweet infancy lay in the breast 

Of doubly-mothering earth; and here at last 

Stout manhood's passion drew about itself 

The silver of its age, and slept. Within 

The distant glen a wild spring thrush poured out, 

Most like the rills of paradise, his song; 

And far he sat upon the ghostly tree. 

And poured his hermit music down the glen. 

With something of the duskiness of spring 

The mighty depths of valley drifted slow 

Among the hills, hills which with fallen trees 

Snow-covered, lay like battle-ruined gods 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Half skeleton beneath the sky. I went 
Under the ghostly tree and turned to look 
Where the long Ohio tugs among her mists; 
And turning yet again, like fire I saw 
The glen-rill near and fretting with the sun, 
Gleaming and glancing. Then upon my heart, 
Swifter than maiden's laughter and more soft 
Than her fellow-foot upon a path of dream, 
There swept the memories of that time when you, 
Frail holy one, went with me here among 
The flowers of long-gone summer days. 

I turned 
A heavy eye upon those objects loved 
Under your notice— what a change was there ! 
All the raw outlines hewn by winter wind. 
Bare tree, bare stone, bare earth, and barren sky ! 
The root that split the rock and in its coil 
Held one slight maiden fern with violets near. 
Stretched thru a frozen convulsion of serpent 

wrath, 
Like some earth agony made evident 
Out of the deeps of earth. And here where 

grew 
The fairy maple with her red cap on, 
A slight child naid leaping up the dell. 
The oak, with his death whisper of dead leaves. 
Stood like a sacristan so iron old 
That my soul chilled as with immediate ice. 
Too heavy were the memories of the place, 
27 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Weighting the heart and making weary all 

The dumb pulse of my bosom: to breathe was 

grief. 
Cold agony its dripping poison sent 
Like frosty hemlock creeping thru my veins, 
Slow, dreadful, holding still from absolute dark: 
A horror ! Stumbling thru the wind, I ran, 
Daring not to turn back and leave the glen. 
Nor to go forward where my holy one 
Might go no longer. — The thrush his hermit song, 
— A swift path up the valley's heaving side, 
Upward, and misery, now keen. My foot 
Here touched a winter fern, and here a burr 
Of sodden chestnut; and the waters fell 
Further beneath me, and the distances 
Grew white and awful till the mighty glen 
Lay swept with infinite pale light a-surge. 
Then on the valley's topmost ramp I stood. 
Like some mad Moldav slave, and looked below 
Where gleaming and glancing the glen rill fretted 

the sun. 
Its voice now like so many airy bells 
Blown thru an evening twilight. There I sat. 
"Myself am a young slave, hauling an oar 
Within a galleon of black dreams. My fault, 
A soul impelled by visions, and my wrong, 
A heart wrapped with the silent cerements of 
An inarticulate ancestry. For these 
The gall chains and the oars of bitter woe !" 
28 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Oh, holy one and frail and fair, I sat 

Alone with my slave miseries ! Below 

I seemed to see you walking in the white 

Of beauty, and your hair lay on the wind 

Like flame. A moment and the flowers rushed 

Bowering your gleaming feet, and your fair hand 

Was living in the flowers, your eyes aglow 

With violets and roses. I could see 

Your shell-like nostrils widen at the breath 

Of lilies, and the lily pulse along 

Your throat. But this was vision all. I wept. 

The grey hills lay beneath me, altars old 

Of ancient Maenad tempest. There was left 

Bare tree, bare rock, bare earth, and barren sky, 

And these alone and only these. I wept. 

A cenotaph was all the earth and heaven, 

And my heart was a little empty tomb. 

And I the bearer of that fearful ark ! 

Oh God, that life should leave the beautiful! 

The odor of her body was rich fruit ! — 

And far the glen-thrush sang and poured his song 

Down the long glen. — The odor of her body 

Was a rich fruit of utter paradise ! 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



EIGHTY DAYS 

"For eighty days I'll trade with you," 

Said Death, "for all you hold 
Lovely." I sealed the trade. The blue 

Of all the sky ran gold. 

I took my bowl of blackened mead. 
Gulped it, saw hell, felt flame; 

And all that earth, hating my greed 
Of Beauty, willed, then came. 

Death put a vision in my hair. 

Hung it before my eyes; 
Oh, it was pale and ghastly fair! 

Its mouth v/as white with cries. 

This bent my head, hurt, crazed my brain; 

And, lo! for eighty days 
It shrilled the fearsome chants of pain 

And whinneyed demon lays. 

I paced the promontories dark 

As bulls' horns in the sea, 
And fevered waves with snarl and spark 
Flung up their spears at me. 
30 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I crept thru island canyons deep 

With wail and bitter night; 
But never waking or asleep 

Could lose that awful sight; 

Till slow where writhing lava rings 

The mountain like a snake, 
I heard the earth-heart where it sings, 

And felt my own heart break. 

"'Tis done," cried Death. "I've wrought 
my deed!" 

"And wrought God's will," cried I, 
"For you who taught my heart to bleed 

Have taught it how to die." 

"Lo, at the last you've wrought me fair 

A diadem of flame. 
And love has followed hidden where 

My bleeding wild-foot came." 

"Upon my sleep she gently waits, 

And all that was is good. 
I go beyond the barless gates 

To Beauty's brotherhood." 



31 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



SONNET 

Come, now your nightshade and your roses 

twine, 
Your Hhes and your deadly bough of yew. 
Cypress and oleanders, and the blue 
Mist violets with heavy moaning pine. 
Low sedges sweet and yellow celandine. 
Twine these and work out coronal and cross 
Against a bed of green and golden moss, 
For she is dead, the holy Alladine. 

Meet is this loveliness, for lovely she 

In her young maidenhood. She taught again 

How beauty may fold up its heart in death, 

And how life may continue in its pain 

From lonely day to night, from breath to breath 

Spending itself against eternity. 



LO, ANYWHERE! 

Last night you lay upon my bed. 
Across my heart your living hair; 
I marveled at the words you said : 

"Lo, anywhere! Lo, anywhere!' 

32 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I marveled at your whispering 
More light than any swallow's wing, 
More sweet than swallows when they sing 
And dart into the northern air: 

"Lo, any where ! Lo, anywhere!" 

Your breath came dewy at my cheek, 
It touched and clung like perfume there, 
Sweetened by that which you did speak: 
"Lo, anywhere! Lo, anywhere!" 

I reached across the counterpane, — 
All, all was night and all was vain! 
And yet I heard your voice again 
As tho it spoke in midnight prayer: 
"Lo, anywhere! Lo, anywhere!" 



TWO POEMS ON THE SEPARATION 
I 

I crept like Death into our room 

And even like Death I snuffed the light; 

My body sobbed within the gloom 
My spirit reeled against the night. 

The windows moaned upon the sky 
Their pale despair of moon and star; 

And thru my being shook a cry 
That came from far and very far. 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Like charnel dew I sought our bed, 
I sought our bed Hke charnel dew: 

Oh God, oh God, that you are dead. 
And I not dead along with you! 



II 

Out of the night, a whisper, 
Out of the deep and the roll 

Of the deep tides, a question 
To shatter my soul. 

Out of the systems, a blinding 
And torture of vision, and lo ! 

Under immensities clinging. 
Moths and chill snow. 

Snow flake and flake from the wing tip 
Loosened by all-mighty breath, 

Down on my pale soul drifting, drifting 
Death! 

A MARSH SONG 
I 

Oh pale green star 
Wan with mist. 
Oh rose of the marshes, 
I keep my tryst! 
34 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I go where the dews are ripe. 
The grasses tall, 
I go where the dews are dark 
The curlews call. 

II 

Never a whisper 

Thru the purple vervain, 

Under the red marish weed, 

No whisper, none. 

All is pain, all is pain, 

All, all is done; 

Under the red marish weed, 

Never a whisper. 



THOU LOVELY STAR 
I 

Thou lovely star in the quiet sky, 

Give me your peace and let me rest; 

The day is gone and the shadows lie 
Hard on the heart I loved the best. 

We'll go no more to our evening hill — 

Happy the days forever gone ! 
And you, dear heart, in the night, how still 

Waiting the dawn, the great white dawn. 
35 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



The raw wet grave in the dark I see, 
You are beneath, that's all I know; 

Beneath, forever apart from me. 
Star of the night, I go, I go ! 



II 

"/ eternally see her figure eternally vanishing." — J. K. 

The clouds lie matted on the hill; 
Like hair of dead men old in pain 
Whistle the strands of winter rain, 

And all my heart is cold and still. 

Fair shape along the iron night 

Taking your way with bleeding feet. 
You fade, and all your fading sweet 

Burns like a death-star on my sight. 

Where black the pouring midnight streams 
Or rolls in huge and ocean form. 
There sounds the thunder of the storm, 

Hell-wild the iron tempest screams. 

White demon of the curling blast. 
Again, again appear to me, 
Tho with your bleeding feet to flee 

And tread the horror of the vast! 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



My demon! Mine, whose angel eye 

Is sunken in a violet tear. 

Again, again to me appear, 
Tho but to vanish and pass by! 

Show the white sorrow of your face ! 

The midnight steeps of terror break! 

The smitten steeps — oh love, forsake 
Not yet my awful prayer place ! 

The coils of tempest round you swing. 
Bleeding with death your feet move on ; 
You shudder thru the awful dawn — 

Eternal is your vanishing! 



UNDER A ROSE 

Under a rose in a garden of bloom 

I have buried my heart, 

And the winds come touching the spectral gloom 

Of the garden rich and fair. 

For a rose grew up in the garden of bloom, 

And faded, and there 

I have buried my heart. 

Let not the night touch to the earth her lip 

All dark and cold; 

For under the earth, down under the mould, — 

Ah, the wind knows ! — 

37 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Even, even as long of old, 

In fellowship so sacred and sweet. 

In fellowship closer than when hearts meet. 

My heart and the rose. 

Living and Dying, 

My heart and the rose ! 



AVE VERUM— Mozart 

Ave verum — lowly, lowly 

Lay her in the tomb; 
Ave verum — slowly, slowly, 

In her little room 
Rest her for her heavy sleeping. 
Rest her from her weeping. 

Ave verum — lovely, lonely 

Fold her in the earth ; 
Ave verum — she sleeps only. 

Quiet from the mirth 
Of bells and wind. She wakes again 
Quiet from her pain. 

Ave verum — ever, ever, 

Tho her eye was bright ! 
Ave verum — never, never. 

Waking in the night! 
38 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

Ave verum, ave verum, — 

Toll the heavy sound; 
Ave verum — beauty dies, 
Ave verum — beauty lies 

Low within the ground. 

BOUGHS OF MAY 

A little luring pathway 

Beneath the boughs of May, 

And black-eyed song, and black-eyed son^ 

Away, oh, away ! 

The path leads thru the shadow. 
The path wastes thru the gloom. 
The gloom of blossoms perishing 
Against the moon. 
And all the little stars are out 
Like blood-buds on the sky, 
And all the fairies round about — 

"Come away, heart, come away, heart! 

There's a bough of blossom high 

Against the moon. 

There's a bough of blossom-bloom 

High against the moon!" 

Oh, it's joy to be a-going, 
Beneath the boughs of May, 
39 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



To feel the jewelled blood come flowing 

While the blossoms hang away 

Against the moon ! 

Oh, it's joy to be a-going, 

And I've worn the pathway true, 

Joy, joy to be a-going 

Back to you — 

An apple bough hung straight against the moon! 

Is everything afire against the moon? 
Oh, my heart, be still and watch the dew ! 
Question not the night-bird where he flew, 
Nor the fire upon the feather tips 
That brushed against the moon ! 

A little luring pathway. 

Luring thru the perfume and the gloom 

Beneath the boughs of May, — 

"Yesterday, yesterday, and forever! 
There's a tomb beneath the moon, 
In the valley beautiful. 

In the valley beautiful with boughs of May, 
There's a tomb beneath the moon, 
There's a tomb beneath the burning boughs of 
May'" 



40 



Ill 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MORTLING 



My thoughts come Hke a Uttle Easter rain 
Flooding the pink cups of an April moss, 
And making a low murmur in the wood. 
In all my mind they swell with tender pain — 
Food-waters in the rootlets of a flower — 
And beauty, hidden, dim, not understood 
Haunts thru my being with the sense of loss, 
A wasted infinite within an hour. 

II 

Then mourn the winds among the sedge and brake, 
Coming from shores profound with death and dull 
With unpromethean clay. Oh dark and deep. 
Things wrought and things unwrought, what 

sudden ache 
Now urges this your mournful movement here? 
Along the night you come with infant creep. 
Crying alone like a land-wildered gul!. 
And striking thru my breast eternal fear. 

Ill 

What is your seeking and what is your end, 
You thoughts that fall and sink and swell thru me 
Like primal substance in a weeping dew? 
43 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



What for my body's mortance do you lend? 

For this my flesh is conduit intricate, 

And you must work your fearful passage thru, 

Tho costing me a deadly agony, 

Toward what form, toward what formless fate? 



FEVER 

He hooked his leopard fingers 
Like burnt tongs in my hair; 

He clawed me down thru forty leagues 
Of rotten red despair. 

I heard the meermen's whistling cry, 
I saw their white-struck souls 

Snarled thick in seaweed green as fire, 
Where the nether ocean rolls. 

A ghastly heap in a bile-dark sea, 

I saw the bones of men 
Heaved slowly round by conger eels: 

They seemed to live again. 

To dance a heavy deep-sea dance. 
With gawkish thumb and toe; 

I reel to join them. Three times three, 
And down like death I go. 
44 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A coral thigh-bone in my hand, 
A green weed round my throat, 

And underneath my bristling neck 
The cold eels writhe and bloat. 

A periwinkle on each eye, 

A moon-shell at each cheek; 
A little meer-damned incubus 

Sat on my breast to shriek. 

The hooked tongs clutch; I hit the sun. 

All golden wild he lay. 
And cuffed the gold froth from the waves 

About a golden bay. 

My breast grows sweet and ocean-cool; 

The big wind shouts a song. 
And like a cask of golden ale 

Landward I'm hailed along. 

The sands burn opal at my feet, 

The wood is windy-green; 
I pass thru emerald aureoles 

In a forest all serene. 

Thru banks of musky amaranth. 

Thru aloe musks that cling, 
Thru brakes of orchids, censerwise 

Which hang and burn and swing. 
45 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And one blue dove moans softly 
On a strange blue-breasted tree; 

I kneel, I lie — a wind comes home, 
And the cool blooms cover me. 



THE GHOST 

The notes of the red cock pierced my window 
like pellets of carbuncle and struck into 
my chest; 

Beyond the East hills Morning was combing her 
russet hair, and wild strands waved over 
the hills as she combed; — 

Then, suddenly, forming yourself out of the old 
light of Arcturus in my northern room, you. 
Ghost. 

Silently, gathering white awe round you, pale, 
oppressive, malignant at first; 

Then, moving nearer my bed, a maiden woven in 
cold opaqueness, smothering moon-snow 
drifting across my brain, 

A wind-flower drifting back into an old forest 
of things anciently hidden, 

Fading with mystical paleness out of my vision, 

Gone! 

46 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



NOVEMBER WIND 

The wind is all one spirit of regret 

Wasting itself among the ruined leaves; 

It seems that God has that He would forget, 
And that He cannot, lo, and that which grieves. 

For surely this wild thing upon the earth, 
Rooting the midnight like a famished boar, 

Is something of a spirit hid from mirth, 
A giant spirit, cosmic, aged, hoar. 

And here it bruises all the mumbling hill. 
And there it tramples in the valley low; 

It must be onward, it is never still; 
It has a heart of pain, and it must go. 

How strange this woeful substance at the door 
Knocking where man lives ! he within the night 

Trusting his little house and more and more 
Merely asleep and waiting for the light. 

So sure if love is on his arm that all 

Is well, so sure of his next little day 
And food and lips and laughter ! — Wandering 
Call, 
Go by here, or go silent on thy way! 
47 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



EARTH 

What winds now blow and what full thunders fall 

Over the earth, moving her solemn way 

With all her silent dead ! What a deep urn 

Is she of her own dust, wrapped in what pall 

Of spacious darkness ! — Dreadful bosomed Mother, 

Great grieving Niobe, while others burn, 

Dark, dark your breast, and dark the tears that 

smother 
The Eden of your cheek which gleamed like day ! 

Where lead you now your foot? The beggar years 
Bring their way-gathered burdens ; what your peace, 
Pacing a sad returning path like one 
Blackly bewildered in familiar fields ! 
Your long, long sleeping children round the sun. 
Asking but half-light, which he hardly yields. 
You bear, and tenderly hope they wake, nor cease 
Your dear pathetic quest, your parent tears. 



THREE MEN 

Three men sat in a book-piled room, 
Crossed their great hands and searched the gloom 
With deep and mighty eyes. The first 
Held life to be a thing accurst; 
48 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



The third of these exclaimed to say 
That hfe was merry, swift, and gay; 
The second only, slow to smile 
And slow to speak, remained a while 
Silent, and brooding deep as one 
Who had some mighty thought begun. 
Then lifting up his humble face. 
He spoke mild words of thought and grace : 
"Life is nor gay nor curst to me. 
But ricii with saving mystery. 
On Grief's dark front there hangs a jewel 
Which makes her countenance less cruel; 
And on the cheek of Happiness 
A royal rose for our caress. 
There is not in all Nature's plan 
An utter grief for any man ; 
And often some remorseful love 
Alone can lift the eye above 
The things that weight its vision down. 
The good have said, 'No cross, no crown'; 
And they are wise who hold it so. 
And learn the miracle of woe. 
Nor lives there in the heart of earth 
A pulse that leaps to utter mirth; 
For that is but insanity 
Which flies too wildly and too free. 
Rather the human bosom would 
Hold to the lovely and the good, 
Hold to the faith of hidden power, 
49 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Hold to the consummating hour 
That shall reveal life's brotherhood. 
We know our joy thru blended tears, 
We trust the deeplier for our fears, 
For our best love we pay with pain, 
And for our sorrows love again." 



AGE AND YOUTH 

And there was one whom age with a grey hand 
Had taken round the forehead, that he wept. 
His eye was in the earth, his soul was dumb 
With many years, and round his drooping form 
An agony clung like a cloak of bitter rain. 
He, seeing me and marking that my face 
Was lifted to the wind, wailed after me : 

"Ten years of passion and ten years of youth 
Are dead in you, ten years of song are dead. 
You had a love of white and awful power, — 
That love is dead. You had a heart whose flame 
Was busy round the beauty of the world. 
And that heart lies in early ashes. You 
Clasped a dark rose against your bosom, crushed it 
On feeling of the thorn, and long ago 
Your blood grew black among its petals far 
On a far path. And once you raised a cry 
Of hunger in a city of wild men, 
50 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A symphony of grief that they might hear 

And learn your worship, and so save themselves. 

But they nor heard nor turned nor cared to hear. 

And you were left, your native faith alone 

In fearful struggle with a monster power 

Which killed and killed and killed and taught 

you how 
Man may grow dumb in misery. Behold, 
I once like you had lips whose ready flame 
Rushed singing at the world, returning thence 
In bitter ashes. Once my eye was fire 
Against the stars, my head hung on the wind, 
My foot a wildling. But the years of earth 
Taught my clear eye to dim, my head to bow, 
My foot to tread the circle of a grey 
And midnight place. That whole divinity 
In which my youth cried brother to the world; 
And wrought its creed, and worked its faith, is gone. 
God drew behind the altars, and they fell. 
And He and they were nothing; and the beast 
Howled in the wood, and man howled like the 

beast. 
Flowers fell panting and the world grew old. 
Youth, take the beaker of thy faith and drink 
Its fiery liquid up, and mock despair!" 

And this one spoke and sought my eyes and smote 
His hand across them as he would have blessed, 
But being blind, he smote my eyes, and wept. 
51 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And many a day I hoarded in my heart 
His heavy sayings, till my heart grew grey, 
And with an agony gave up its voice. — 
Yet with the coming of the May I sang 
Again, then knowing better why he wept. 



LINES ON BEAUTY 

I went where all the towers of Beauty stood 

And took my heart and placed it in a street 

Near a swift minaret of jasper fire. 

" Here," said my heart, " my prayer is answered me : 

This minaret is benediction given." 

Ah, I was happy for the choice it made; 

For there were towers that slanted past the sun 

And hurled their splendid cornices of gold 

Into the eternal spaces. I was glad 

As one who in his native city finds, 

Among great palaces, at last a home. 

Two mightiest towers, I saw the First and Last, 
And far between them swung the many years 
As tho some huge arachnid had spun out 
His web to prison time and all that time 
Has bred. And, lo! as with my eye I swept 
The measureless suspension, I beheld 
That naked Beauty held the First and Last, 
And that along the infinite gossamer, 
52 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Various, glowing, mightily hued, there moved 
The same calm Loveliness, and all was one. 

I have seen glory from the mountain top. 
And gathered beauty with ray hands from far 
And ancient seas. Where men in aeons old 
Have wrought strange mystery of written, pale. 
Eternal thought, or where with somber dream 
They died, there have I chosen long to be. 
Yet from it all, the passion and the sense 
Of life's vast iterance, the stern recoil 
Unto itself of the eternal norm, 
The pitiful pathos of the million towers 
Blown over by wild Iran's dust, I turn 
To the low quiet of the human mind. 
Within itself pacing the infinite height 
Whose wistful loveliness is God. And in 
The mellow-fruited sorrow that I find 
Packing my heart with Wisdom's melancholy, 
I best discern the Alpha and Omega 
Within whose large suspension lies the whole 
That I have been or I may hope to be. 

CONJECTURE 

The clouds like aged monks, bearing their stars. 
Enter the high cathedral of the night 
At holy time. Low in the western aisles, 
Over the silver altars Levite-pure, 
53 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A radiant sacristan with censer curved 
Pours thick libation sweet as smouldering gold; 
And from her furthest transept field, and from 
Her dread confessional forests, lo, and from 
The anchorite basins of her deeps, earth sends 
Eternal incense up. At such a time, 
Impregnate with deep prayer, I mingle me 
With psalms of ceasing, low chaunts of the soul 
Seeking her loneliness, or seeking yet 
The infinite Beauty of the AU-in-All. 

If there be vasts beyond the hot struck mind. 
Places of quiet, steadfast, strong, and whole, 
Eased of all urgency and undefiled 
By fevered scarlet and the white of pain. 
Give me to sink beneath the mellowing surge 
Of my poor passion and go down to them. 
Lo, I have loved and found and lost; and now 
The light that burned my forehead has gone out. 
Leaving a scar, and all my blood cannot 
Fashion one rose within my flesh. I am 
Grown old among a musky race of youth 
Who wash themselves in dew and, white of limb, 
Gleam toward desire, and have. Dimly I seem 
To gather one poor vision in my arms, 
One faded vision close above my heart — 
If I might weep for her I yet would live! 
But being as I am I long to go 
Beneath the deeps, the whole and undefiled. 
54 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



AH, SAPPHO 

Ah, Sappho, sweet Aeohan, 

Warm panting still for Phaon's love. 
In Mytilene didst thou wear, 

Mixt with thine olive, scented clove? 

Soft! how the oleander bloom 

Stains the wet marching of thy feet. 

And how across thy double breast 

The musk thorn bites the honey meat! 

Passion's eternal phantom, thou. 
Behold me deckt with columbine. 

And in my clenched hand, one rose, 
Dead as that palest flower of thine! 

SNOW-MUSK 

I have not known the brittle cup 

That crashes with one evening's wine; 

I have not known the scented grape 
That bursts upon the mid-noon vine; 

I have not known the musk and nard 
Sweeting the flame of one mad kiss, 

The one night's close delirium 

That pants beneath a scarlet bliss. 
55 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



I've often thought, before I die 

One night I'd eat and drink, and go 

A-reveHng. But, ah, I've built 
My house upon a hill of snow! 



THE SNOWS 

Wet wind tears 

Powdered with starlight, 

Silvered and made splendid 

By a tattered brocade of moonbeams, 

Curiously fashioned 

By tempest-struck chisels of steel. 

Airy and keen, 

Flee down the wind paths. 

They make grey flowers in the sky 

Against the breast of evening. 

Like flakes of shattered pearls they scatter. 

Interlaced, 

Moving with passionate wonder. 

At other times 
They are wings flung loose 
From the bodies of angels. 
They are the souls of God 
In flight. A rich red 
Music Gomes out of them 
56 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

Like a fresh voice singing 
Thru a golden trumpet. 
And then they are feathers of sleep 
Falling over the eyes of the world. 
Were you to hold up a Calla-lily 
And catch a deep trumpet full. 
You could not see them, 
They are so delicate and white. 



They will cover all the city; 

But in the morning men will walk on them 

And they shall be mud in the streets. 



BY AN EVOLUTIONIST 

How shall one argue that the beast 
Is quiet in the man at last? 

The senile sinew burns the least, 
The dew-drop in the heart is past; 

And Age, who takes away the breath 

Delivers man to spirit — death ! 

"The hey-day in the blood is tame" 
And reason rules the passion down? 

The passion is not there, the name 
Is broken-tissue, brain-of -clown. 

No phantom off-spring burns the face 

Of father heat or mother grace. 
57 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Nor promise here of after life 

That toils the brilliant slopes of time; 
But something less than ruddy strife, 

And something paler far than crime: 
A dream that draws dim-curtained sleep 
About the mystery of the deep. 



THE MOON WAS WHITE 

The moon was white and very, very new, 

The moon was white, almost as white as day, 

When he left his play, 

And made no track on his white way to sleep. 

But all the white of pale snow moons can not 

Fill my dark footsteps deep. 

My footsteps that sink ever on the way, 

The white way that my baby went to sleep. 



THE DIM WATER 

How golden was the day, 
And the night how golden. 
In those olden, olden times 
When we went to play 
Under the forest tree, 
Beside the dim water! 
58 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Oh, the dim water. 

The rushing dim water ! 

I did not dream that it would carry you away, 

In those olden, olden times 

When we went to play 

Beside the dim water. 



HIMERIUS TO SAPPHO 

Aeolian Sappho, rosy-breasted 
Loveliness of the Paphian groves. 
Bind on thy heart the warmest lily, 
Bind it with bands, the gold-pure sweetness 
Of thy nightingale-woven locks. 

Come with thy soft foot shadow-sandled. 
Sweet from thy bath, oh Lesbian daughter, 
Bearing the flower to my trembling heart-ache. 
Where I am waiting, rich oleanders 
Softening my couch by the sea. 

White are thy limbs 'neath clinging moon-silver, 
Gleaming with pearls thy knees bend near me. 
Suddenly down thou dartest. O'er me. 
Burning my sense, thy bosom nestles. 
Crushing the lily against my heart, 
59 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A SONG 

Oh, sweet wild rose, 

Tenderly you greet me, 

Tenderly you meet me, 

While all the wind is full of shadow 

In the high tree bough. 

Oh, sweet wild rose, 

Alas! Who knows? 

Is the thrush within the thicket 

Is God's voice within the sky? 

Far off I hear a cry, 

"Beauty that endures. 

Beauty that will die!" 

Oh, sweet wild rose. 
Where is he who knows? 

The winds are in the bough. 
And I am going now; 
I have seen you, I have loved you, 
And, — good-bye ! 



HO 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



BLUE-BIRDS 

I heard three bhie-birds at dawn. 

When sleep was leaving my eyes ; 
And my soul started up from her clean white rest, 

And sang at the morning skies. 

I heard three shadows at eve, 

Come singing out of the wood ; 
And my soul had desire for her clean white rest, 

And slept, for her rest was good. 



A SONNET IN BLANK VERSE TO- 



How softly Autumn comes unto these hills, 
Touching them with her infinite drer.ms of death. 
Like some tired nun of queenly heritage 
Who prays herself asleep, her vestments fine 
And various cast all aside. Yet here. 
Above the pathos of her passion pale, 
There linger high emblasted with old fire 
The coronals of heaven. Ah, to me 
This is the symbol sacrament of age 
Coming upon your lifted brow ! Even so 
Let it come quietly, with kindly light 
Searching away the loveliness of youth 
And gathering that good unto itself 
Which blesses down the heart with gentle sleep. 
61 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



ROCKS 

(To Mother) 

Except as fancy builds out of the deep, 

And as faith forms, 
No dreams have I of infancy and sleep; 

In gentle storms 
Of timid wildness visions rise and come 
From that one moment when young memory 
With young life locked her hand : 
Before all else is dumb, 
And after much is dead in me, 
And I a stranger in my own heart-land. 

Yet from the pathos of that earliest time 

I have a store of sweet and mouldy dreams, 

Old things of mist that will not lend to rhyme 
Their substance, but like the deepening gleams 

Of golden light, escape and are no more. 

Disputing of her God, 

With Nature I went out alone, 

My lore 

Only a child's heart; 

And with a little rod, 

Remembering Moses, I would strike some stone: 

No water came; saddened I would depart. 

In open fields I set up altars when 
My feet scarce bore my years; 
62 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And many tears 
I let fall in those places. Turning then, 
Priestlike, I poured upon the wind 
The incense and the rapture of my mind; 
And often there 

I felt the cold earth at my infant knee, 
And my heart chilled at prayer. 
The little piles of stone 
I'd scatter out again to where they lay. 
And ceasing there to pray, 
Once more I wandered on, wild, passionate, alone. 

Yet even by these altars I began 

To sense the ages and the life of man. 

I left my woeful worship, and to school 

I set myself with some crude native tool, 

Rock against rock, and cracking rock 

To know the heart hid in them. 

Many a gem 

I found, and laughed to feel the shock 

Of my small hands breaking the stony lock 

Of the ages. Wild and white 

The wealth of open casques lay in my hand, 

And I would smite and smite 

And feel myself an emperor in the land. 

Nor did my impatient wonder feed and cease 
Over the crystals of some ancient thing 
That dreamed and had its peace, 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



Secure from tides that fall 

On outward coasts, from tides long wont to cling 

Upon the heaving breast of earth; and vain to 

its low sleep 
The ocean voices when they call 
Out of the deep. — 

This holding in my hand, I often raised 
My eye to where on northern hills there blazed 
In mount fire, white clouds. These took 
A being might on them; I would look 
Saying, "The glaciers come again!" 
My soul leaped up with awe and pain. 
Treading the thunders paced in low stampede, 
While the old North 
Hurled forth 

His ancient bergs. With monster speed. 
Ploughing the heaving bosom of the world 
These came, about them curled 
Wild lights, and on them mountains set 
Like puffs of dew, tho yet 
From their torn bases streamed raw lava gold. 
The earth grew cold. 

A fantasy ! 

Often the great recoil 
Of the thundering land-bergs held me. 
Starting away, long day on day. 
With naked foot upon the naked soil 
Washed level by blown rains, I spent. 
64 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A lore I had of birds who seek their spoil 

After revealing waters fall, and my intent 

Was to secure from rinsed fields, 

Before the grain wove over them its green, 

The treasure that disturbed Nature yields, 

Secrets of buried children. And I sought 

Not vainly for some place where red men wrought 

In former times their labor, I have seen 

Whole ridges near some running water strewn 

With chips of shattered flint, half-hewn 

Arrow-heads, great tips of spear, 

Unfluted tomahawks cast down in fear 

Or the last weariness. Each plough-scattered ring 

That marked the workman's lodge, I'd view 

With utter melancholy ; for the thing 

Wove in me strange emotions new 

Of life and death, 

And the long failing of the body breath. 

Her purer forms then Nature wrought 
About me, taught 

Her fuller lessons till the faith in me 
Might rise and wrestle with its wing 
Against the spirited air, and fling 
My soul above the lower mystery 
Of life. I well recall 
One place most dear of all. 
Where I held my communion, 
Felt true the deep reunion 
65 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

Of my being with all being. A place 

Of trees where twin brooks run, 

Where flowers woo open to the sun 

Of every Spring; 

Where thrushes sing, 

And where one well might hope to meet God face 

to face. 
There while an evening fell, 
And the mild hare-bell 
Hung its frail cup of blue, 
Filled with the gentle dimness of the night, 
I knew 

My vision, and the light 
I am to give came swiftly to my eyes : 
The stern emprise 

Of seeking Beauty fell upon my soul, 
And made it strong and rapturous and whole. 

LINTELS OF THE SUN 

I am lonely on my hill, 

I have gathered many flowers; 

But the moments tarry still. 
Tarry still the weary hours. 

Did you smile but to deceive 

Grief that trampled in your heart? 

If you did then I must grieve. 
Grieve and weep and so depart. 
66 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Were you happy but to say 

Words that paused within my ear? 
If you were I must away, 

Far away nor hnger here. 

Is it that the Hly fades 

Where the rose is spread in bloom? 
Let me then seek valley shades, 

Vailey shades and valley gloom. 

I am lonely on my hill, 

Lonely thru the weary hours; 
Shall I linger weeping still? 

I have gathered many flowers. 



SONNET TO- 



She drank so greedily the day of love 

That night came doubly soon to her. Where late 

With golden horn under a golden sun 

She sat, now shadows swarm, and dimly great, 

Huge shouldered things push at the hills. Above 

The place a windy star, and only one. 

To her time is a heavy-footed thing, 
Toiling down hills with dusty urns outslung 
Along his side. There where the years have sung 
Their ancient psalms of old remembering, 
67 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



He moves with his great burden. Outward swing 
The mighty casques, bumping among the flowers 
Their aged belhes. After him the hours, 
The hours, the infinite hours go toihng. 



THE CANDLE 

The wax of the candle 

Lies in strips and splatters 

Along the page where you bent to read. 

I remember how red and tall the candle was 

When I lit it — your face beyond the flame — 

And how curiously thru the night hours I watched 

the wax 
Drip, drip, drip out of the little gutters at the 

rim of the candle. 
At half past one a horror took me : 
It was lest you should read 
What I had written at half past one the night 

before. 
Then — I don't know why — 
I tore my note book open at the very place. 
You read, holding the dripping candle. 
I felt the words cringing beneath the wax 
Raw from the wick : 
The cut of your hand against my cheek, 
The cut of your words at my heart hurt not 

so much. — 

68 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Until the gusty morning 

I stared across the page at the candle 

Where you had left it. 

When the sun shone 

I saw nothing there but a pool of congealed 

Blood-like wax, with a bar of wick fallen in it, — ■ 

Across the page with its strips and splatters : 

Thin red serpents in a field of carbuncles ! 

TWO TRIOLETS 

I 
The tinkle of a mandolin 

Along the waves of moon and white, 
I hear it far and clear and thin, 

The tinkle of a mandolin. 
Well I recall what might have been 

Another such a moonlit night: 
The tinkle of a mandolin 

Along the waves of moon and white. 

II 

Beneath the yellow tamarind 

She stooped to soothe her low guitar, 
And round her breast the loose scarf pinned, 

Beneath the yellow tamarind 
Shimmered like star-gold wrought and thinned 

By sapphire shadow. Oh, lost star ! 
Beneath the yellow tamarind 

She stooped and struck her low guitar ! 
69 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



REMEMBERING 



Is it the scent of the cedar bower 

Or the hour of the moon 

That works in my breast? 

Is it the beating of wind-strown waters. 

The song of the daughters of foam 

That has taken me home and given me rest? 

I can not tell, 

But the calm in my heart I know full well. 

Is it the song of the pitiful bird 

Overheard in the night, 

The sweet of despair? 

Or is it a memory ancient and olden, 

The long ago golden light of your face 

As here in this place you loved me, my fair? 

I can not tell, 

But the calm in my soul I know full well! 

II 

You lifted my eyes 

To the lion, to the bear; 

And now all the skies 

Are asking, "Are you there?" 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



The waters of the deep 

By the shoreUne of the night 

Are falUng asleep: 

"Who is waiting in the hght?" 

The earth shudders thru 

All the arteries of her breast: 

I weep to think of you, 
And weeping, rest. 

Ill 

I cannot doubt that now alone 

You wait the evening from the field. 

You pluck the moss upon the stone, 
You pluck the stone that will not yield. 

The lark among the clover blooms 

With one hushed twitter goes to sleep, 

And from the valley float the glooms. 
And from the marsh the vapors creep. 

Nor yours nor mine the fault that now 
We cry against the winds of night: 

Life is not measured by a vow. 
And vision measured not of light. 



71 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

DEAD 
I 

The beauty of your eyes was like mist 

Sunk in moon pools ; 

The beauty of your spirit was about you 

Like odor of orchids ; 

Your laugh was a little star 

Singing above paradise. 

Now you are dead. 

II 

The waters of your little lake 
Are pale laughter; 
About your little chateau 
There are shadows ; 
In the shadows 
There is silence : 

You are dead. 

Ill 

The blue-bird that you loved 
Has closed his bill, — 
He is gone. 

The violet that I pluckt 
Is sweet mould 
By your pathway : 
You shall not tread on it more: 
You are dead! 
72 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



TO 

Within the tomb of years I halted pace 
To gaze upon each dead embalmed face, 
To reckon once again the form, the grace. 

And here were some whose cerement blossomed 

white, 
And here were some whose cloth was as the night, 
And here upon one brow rested eternal light. 

In that great light I saw God's blessing glow 
On two whose love was lily and pure snow — 
But that was long, ah, very long ago ! 

Then up there rose each dark and fearful form : 
They thrust their fingers in the light yet warm, 
And chilled it, and closed on me like a storm. 

I wonder often if you yet would see 
A passion in this tale, close mystery. 
Or turning, if you'd say, "Why, this means 
naught to me." 



73 



MARSEA 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MARSEA 

THE PEOPLE OF THE POEM 

An Old Man — Marsea's Father. 
An Old Woman — Marsea's Mother. 
Marsea — a young woman. 
Malatestaa — an older woman, 

friend of Marsea 

THE PROLOG — ITS SETTING, — 

The V!Ood is dark and heavy with its oum shadoii). 
The disproportionate immensity of the trees and the 
rocks sloioly appalls the sense and presses it at last 
to a state of incuhus and agony. Among the trees, 
like a broken gray serpent, lies an old pathway. 
Two persons only can he seen: an old Man sunken 
upon a stone, an old Woman leaning upon a staff. 
When they speak their voices seem larger than they, 
and are hollow and toneless with extreme age and 
weariness. 

OLD MAN 

No, no. There is no use. 

OLD WOMAN 

We must go on. 

77 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



OLD MAN 

No. 

OLD WOMAN 

But she— 

OLD MAN 

Is lost. There is no use — lost ! 

OLD WOMAN 

Lost ! We must go on. 

OLD MAN 

The shadows 
Are too deep. 

OLD WOMAN 

Come, Father, come. 

OLD MAN 

She said her soul was lost. There are 
So many ways to what is lost. 

OLD WOMAN 

Come! 

OLD MAN 

I am afraid. My child ! 

78 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



OLD WOMAN 

My child! Marsea! Marsea! 

OLD MAN 

Marsea! 

(They go on weeping.) 

THE CULMINATION OF AN INCIDENT. 

A well of black ivater in a pit among cypress 
trees. Upon the lips of the well, cutting thru black 
mosses, are twelve red flowers. Marsea is sitting 
clutching one of these flowers at its root. 

MARSEA 

Beauty is blood ! It was not told 
Me so. Beauty is blood ! I'll have 
The secret of you from the root. 
Or lower still, from the black sands, 
Hued nightly darker by the seep 
Of mists thru these thick mosses. So ! 

{She Digs) 

Yet, yet no secret out ! 
A little wild earth mumbled at 
My finger's end, where stood but now 
The complete delicate being. 
So now you die, — alive or dead, 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 

Beautiful ! Then beauty grows 
Not from the earth it feeds on, 
No, nor hves, but being dead. 
Remains ! 

{She suddenly casts the flower to the central 
quiver of the well) 

The tip of the breast of death ! 
Moving with the hidden spring 
Of death ! Now the long pale stem, 
Lying timorous for a moment, 
Sinks, and downright, like a shaft 
Piercing the spring, sucks from it, till 
The flower, drawing a heavy color. 
Sinks. — How black and deep these waters ! 

MALATESTAA 

(from among the trees) 
Marsea ! 

MARSEA 

You! 

MALATESTAA 

My lovely friend! 

MARSEA 

Ooh! 

MALATESTAA 

Weeping? Sweet, sweet and wretched! 
80 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MARSEA 

Why did you come? 

MALATESTAA 

T knew this place, 
And feared. 

MARSEA 

And feared? 

MALATESTAA 

Feared. A little 
White flame rose from my spirit 
And led me here : you are my hunger 
And my fruit. 

MARSEA (avoiding) 

Look there ! Look there ! 

MALATESTAA 

The uncharneled ghost of the moon, wasting 
Along the wistfulness of day. 
Even so he showed himself that time, 
My woman heart its vestment dim 
Of older years tore suddenly off, 
When, pale with wonder, lily-like 
We stood, fronting each other with 
Our naked souls; and unabashed 
We gave into each other's eyes 
What maidenhood might keep from God. 
81 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MARSEA 

The time, the time. I never feared 
As then I feared, till now. 

MALATESTAA 

What fear? 

MARSEA 

In the imperial crown 
Of the zenith heaven that night I saw 
Two great gems loosen and, amazed. 
Whirl in the purple field until. 
Clashing, the great round shook; 
And one alone returned to sit 
Upon the dusky forehead of 
The night. 

MALATESTAA 

So to commemorate 

Our union the celestial flames 

Unite in regal purity. 

MARSEA 

And when that night, weeping, I came 
To the blue w. 11 of Nadir deep 
By the tarn of Shadows, you arose 
And took me; and you spoke of beauty 
Till the frame of the wide universe 
Thinned its huge substance into spirit; 
82 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



You spok? of truth until the heart 
Of earth, hurled from its sling of mist. 
Rushed ruining thru the inane dark; — 
And all that night the rose-crowned jewe' 
Burned in the well, and all that night 
I wept. 

MALATESTAA 

Your tears were brighter than 
The tears of sandarac, sweeter than 
The tears of mastic, and more dear 
Than all the tarn gems glancing deep 
Into the infinite night. 

MARSEA 

After, 

Alone upon the Hill of the Kingdom, 
Among memorial emblems of 
Your love, and munerary winds 
Whose gift was the sweetness of the cedar, 
1 saw at race along the steeps 
Of upper air, a golden bird 
Crying distressfully, and a great 
Cloud of hawkish shape whose wings 
Touched at the East and West. These made 
Their straining way across my vision 
Until the sweet bird, failing at 
The misty maw of the falcon tempest. 
Uttered such agony that all 
83 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



His breast burst streaming on the wind, — 
And the cloud took him. {She weeps) 

MALATESTAA 

Was this the time the white star, 
Rising against the North in snow 
And pearl, suddenly wheeled and fell 
Across the heavens, striking the southern 
Pole in a red tempest, green 
About its hollow throat? 

MARSEA 

The time! 

And under visions we went to 
The sea, and visions crept around us 
In the cave of Love low by the sea. 
And maiden wraiths of vision swept 
Our shaHop to the sea, and all 
The sea rose in a vision round us 
While we floated among the pearls 
And fantasies of etherial green. 
And when at last a frail mist rose, 
Lifting our shallop out along 
The jade-pale crests of the deep, you cast 
One flower into the fair moon-azure 
Drifting along our prow. All night 
The flower moved on the samite waves 
Dreamily shoreward, and all night 
I watched it dipping under the long 
84 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

Pale crests of pearl, until a whisper 
Of sands came underneath us and 
We stepped among the murmuring shells 
Along the shore. There as we turned 
We saw the flower high-shaken in 
The hoar mane of the last vexed wave; 
Then while the deep moaned, stricken 
Across its bosom with wide flame, 
The flower drooped down, a moment lay 
Burning the wild opal of the sand. 
And passed into the deep. 

MALATESTAA 

I knew 

The morning came and caught the white 
Of sea mist from our hair; I knew 
Your brow was white and white your hands. 
Only your eyes were living as 
You sat among the weed-laced shells ; 
And in them the frought phantoms gleamed 
Working in mimic mystery 
The passions of your soul. I spoke. 
And at my voice your heart swooned 
In one long pitiful sigh. You rose, 
And like a babe bare-footed on 
The winds of sleep, all tenderly 
You lead me here, in innocence 
Resting upon my bosom till 
You sank to deeper realms of dream. 
85 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MARSEA 

1 dreamed. I never told the dream. 

MALATESTAA 

Your being weakened, and your body 
Lay like a faint sob shuddering 
Against my heart. 

MARSEA 

Too great to bear ! 
Mad with the thick writhing of 
The abortive thought of sleep ! You sat 
On a high place, a windy sun 
Coronal round you. Over the white 
Of your shoulder a bronze-dim harp 
Curved its wild throat. Your hand wrought 
Gleaming upon the gleaming strings. 
Unweaving long tresses of music 
"Which darted and flashed down the wind. 
These came under the valley boughs. 
Touched me, bound me like gossamers, 
Lifted me thru the violet air, 
And bore me upward. Dizzily, 
Meshed with the mad light, my pulses 
Beating under your hand, I came 
Toward you. Then as I came the silks 
W hich bound me, fearfully coiled, bloated 
And bulged at my throat and hurled me. 
Eying, into a black wind 
86 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



That rushed thru yourharp strings, pressed me there 
While your gleaming nails cut into my heart. 
I waked ; your bosom held me; my eyes 
Went to the depth of death. I knew 
My horror, for I waked and it 
Remained as when I slept. 

MALATESTAA 

Oh friend, 

Into whose heart, lacking of husband 

And of babe, I poured the pent 

Languors of maidenhood, the full 

Unquickened and unmilked life 

Of woman, all those natural powers 

Of passionate being, which compressed. 

Unloosed, sought you the wilder way 

In me, unnatural lived and mad 

To spend my impulse, why must you 

Be wretched in the impregnate love 

Which springs from my charged bosom round 

You purely? 

MARSEA 

I have told my visions 
And my dream of visions. 

MALATESTAA 

Rest 

But again where rest for you was sweet, 
And for me the uncharging of my soul 

87 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MARSEA 

Never again in that sweet place 
May 1 give up my heart to dream 
And peace. Most tender is it that 
A maiden leave a maiden when 
Both love, and when around them 
The stars have wrought their witcheries. 

MALATESTAA 

Remember but that better time 

When low in whispering husks the ripe ear> 

Hung, and when the South pressed keen 

At the wing-pits of the birds, and they 

Were glad to go. You went with me 

Among the jewel- weeds and the gold 

Marsh daisy, the purple vervain and 

The sweet milk-lavender, across 

The cricket and sun-singing fields — 

MARSEA 

My death was hidden from these things; 
And they were beautiful, as they 
Shall be. 

MALATESTAA 

Remember but the rains 
In the sweet cedar, and the winds 
That filled the night. Oh remember 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



The wet leaves fallen like a golden 
Shadow about the trees, and 
The stars among the shadow-leaves 
At night! 

MARSEA 

These things are for the years, 
And they shall be. — Have 1 not burned 
To have one beautiful thing within 
My keep and hold? I once did weep 
Two days and nights over a rose 
Fading beneath my tears, and they, 
My very tears tore the sweet petals 
From their place and lay with them, 
Mocking their own sad source. Beauty 
Is blood ! 

MALATESTAA 

I do not understand. 

You are going far from me ; I cannot 

Feel you near me any more ! 

MARSEA 

These trees are large, reaching out 
Above the night. 

MALATESTAA 

Their tips are silver. 

MARSEA 

These waters here are dark and deep. 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



MALATESTAA 

The sands they rest on are of gold. 

MARSEA 

I had my visions and my dream 
Of visions. It was you who taught 
Me truth and you who taught of beauty, 
And you consumed rae. — 

{Mar sea leaps into the well.) 

END OF THE INCIDENT 
THE EPILOG 

The Old Man and the Old Woman on another 
portion of the pathway. 

OLD MAN 

The shadows are too deep, too deep ! 

OLD WOMAN 

We never shall find her! We never shall find her' 

OLD MAN 

We are all lost, lost ! {He sobs) 

OLD WOMAN 

Why are you laughing? 

90 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



OLD MAN 

I am not laughing. 

OLD WOMAN 

What was it that I heard? 

OLD MAN 

I do 

Not know. 



91 



ALLADINE 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



ALLADINE 

Part 1 

An April morning — the castle gate 

Is wide to the wind, and standing there. 

Singing a wild song, Alladine, 

Alladine, the great earl's daughter. 

Fair to see. Her silk-white gown 

Is blown by the wind, and her red red hair 

Is backward blown, and moving with wind 

Makes living flame on the marble gate. 

High her bosom and deep her eye. 

Her lips two red harps arched with song, 

And paler her cheek than the tumeric pale. 

And her hands in the wind two lilies floating. 

Around the castle a deep, deep wood 

With a black tarn sunk in its heart; and thru 

Its aisles of umber the hunter going 

With cross-bolt set and with cross-bow draw 

For oft at night a great owl floats 

Over the tarn hoot-to-hoo, 

And rattling rise from the deep 
To clash their fine castanets 
Of splintered and clapping thumb, 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 

To dance a lean dance to and fro 

Under the green of a windy moon. 

But sweet is April! A fairy bough 

The dog-wood Hfts in the leafless wood, 

And the cherry wild, the cherry wild. 

White in the evening with drifting bloom! 

Therein the nightingale is wont 

To seal her wings with the amber dew. 

To lay her breast in the pale blooms deep, 

And touch her heart to the world's true pain. 

Tremble the blossoms, the lilies tremble 

Far in the vale, and the wild rose weeps, 

And the white- veined birch is stricked with stars 

That glance thru the dark of the larch and over 

The willow sweet as a sea-fountain foaming. 

A voice at her ear, for high her song; 
A voice, a whisper, and wide her eye : 

"Oh Alladine, fair Alladine, 
Sing with your lips like red harps arching; 
Your cheek shall be more pale, more pale 
Before another Spring-time's breaking!" 

There breaks the blue of the distance a rider, 
Shot like a star from the hill-ridge green; 
Flame in the azure, a herald galloping. 
Galloping, galloping. The king's flag hung 
96 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



At his trumpet's throat, a fringe of purple 
Makes of its edges wearing with wind. 
He plunges him down in the larchen valley, 
And up from the valley he rushes like May, 
And now he sits by the great earl's draw-bridge, 
Sounding a blast on his pearl-dark horn. 
In answer the watchman's trumpet. Down 
The draw-bridge clangs; the charger neighs; 
His gleaming feet on the dim oak thunder; 
And low saluting fair Alladine, 
The herald enters the marble gate. 

Out the great earl strides from the castle 
With pursuivant and herald before him, 
A mighty man. And the king's herald speaking: 
"My master, tlie king, sends me. Earl Gray, — " 
"Your master, my master. Speak!" says the 

earl. 
"Have we not tended our marches well, 
Fought the heathen, our tribute paid?" 
"Right well, stout Earl; and our master, the king, 
Holds you highly, the which to prove 
He rests his love in your courtesy 
And comes with his queen and his court to you. 
For he hears that the white stag roams your wood, 
And he hears, oh Earl, and I speak it freely, 
The praise of your daughter Alladine, 
Fair Alladine, your only daughter. 
Whose voice is a northern rill in the sun." 
97 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

So speaks the herald; the great earl laughs; 

And AUadine, hearing, catches her hair 

In from the wind, and one white hand 

Strikes to her breast and arches and gleams. 

"Fair Alladine, your only daughter, 

Whose voice is a northern rill in the sun" — 

"So," she thinks, "the great king spoke, 

And the great queen heard him and all the 

court!" 
And hard she presses her hand to her bosom. 

Fair Alladine is high in a tower. 

Watching the way the king will come. 

Singing, and watching the worn green way, 

Singing, and listening the echoes sweet 

That come from the castle towers around. 

Bound is her hair in a golden braid, 

Bound her breast with a cincture of gold. 

And round her waist a band of gold. 

And her feet in golden sandals gleaming. 

Fair is Alladine to see 

As she sings and listens the echoes fall 

Back from the towers like low applause 

Fresh and sweet to her shell-turned ear. 

"The white stag roams the wood," she sings, 

"Lin-et, lin-o, lin-u," she sings, 

"And the king has heard of my voice," she 

sings, 
"And the king has called me fair." 
98 



The Garden oj Seven Trees 

The scarlet blast of a trumpet gleams, 

And Alladine is mute the while; 

A slight crenel holds all her beauty, 

The grey dark merlon feels her hand. 

Into the wood and out of the wood, 

The king is riding among his train 

His purple banners welted with gold, 

And heavy they move deep under the sun. 

The inner courtyard gate, it swings; 

The outer courtyard gate is swinging, 

And out the earl, pursuivants, heralds. 

Spreading gold cloth, pale skins of the white 

hart 
Over the way that the king will come. 
Trumpets low beating, thin, sweet laughter 
Rising among the turrets high: 
The earl is kissing the queen's own hand, 
The earl is kneeling low to the king. 

Gracious the king: "Kneel not, my Earl. 

My love would hold you of nearer worth; 

And of my love dearest hostage I give. 

My queen to your hospitality. 

Yet why lack we here your daughter fair. 

Whose beauty should grace our welcome 

royal? 
Tonight I shall crave her a song for my queen, 
And see that she wear this necklace wrought 
Of wild white diamonds close to her throat." 
99 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



On the dog-wood bough and the wild cherrie, 

Long the nightingale sounds her song; 

The great moon goes up into the sky, 

And the winds fall out of the sky and cease. 

It is early evening and near the time 

When the bellman shall sound the feast of the king. 

"The king's own diamonds, bright are they!" 

Thinks Alladine in her castle bower, 

"And well shall I sing for my own sweet queen. 

And all shall mark me and hear me sing; 

The nightingale in the wild cherrie 

Shall hush and harken only to me." 

She lifts the necklace, she holds it high; 
Wild, white and wild the sweet light flies 
And beats and pulses and swims in her view 
Under the red and the thickening gold 
Of the candle gleam. A moment, then 
The great gems close to her throat she binds, 
And wan are they, her throat so fair; 
Out laughs she softly, so pleased is she. 
And warbles a lyric repressed and sweet. 
Until her throat and the gems together 
Live like white water beaten with sun, 
A northern rill in the white sunshine. 

Wide the hall, the great torch flaring. 
On jewel-struck branch the candle high, 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



And high the windy censer burning. 
With flashing cup the great board set, 
Woven with gold the women's hair, 
And a twinkhng hilt at each noble's side. 

Loud the laughter, the rough, free joy, 

And the king arises and calls for song: 

"A song from our north-land nightingale. 

Our Earl's fair daughter, AUadine; 

A song from her, a lyric gay 

To fit the ear of my lovely queen." 

Earl Gray is rising; his daughter's hand 

He takes, and leads her high in hall. 

To a lifted place set round with bowers 

Of the dog-wood white and the white cherrie. 

So bowered she is with sweet and fair 

That the good king laughs and tosses his wine: 

"Behold, my queen, a nightingale 

More fair than ever you did see, 

A nightingale in the white cherrie!" 

So smiles the queen; and Alladine 

Hears pulses beating one, two, three, 

And lifts her voice in a lyric gay. 

A white hart roams the green wood thru, — 

Lin-et, lin-o, lin-u — 
A white hart roams the green wood thru. 
And the king is riding in scarlet and blue, — 

Lin-et, lin-et, lin-o, lin-u. 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



"Now who can draw me the longest bow?" 

Lin-u, Un-et, hn-o. 
"Now who can draw me the longest bow, 
To fetch me this hart, I fain would know?" 

Lin-u, lin-et, lin-o. 

"And that can I," says Fingeret, — 

Lin-o, lin-u, lin-et. 
"And that can I," cries Fingeret, 
And he shoots with his bow, does Fingeret, 
But the white, white hart is roaming yet, 

Lin-o, lin-u, lin-et, lin-et. 

There rises the queen and all arise, 

And from her own sweet breast she takes 

A broach of heavy gold, deep set 

With rubies four, and rimmed about 

With sky-blown sapphires fair. She flings 

The token, and others fling of broach 

And necklace and chain and ring 

And nuggets of gold from the snow streams pickt. 

And raw gems gathered on far warm shores. 

Until fair Alladine is standing, 

Her white foot set in a pool of gold 

And her ankles wrapt by chains of pearl: 

A fountain she of high white fire 

Bursting from deeps of crystal flame. 

The bellman has freightened the drowsy owl 
Who sits by the bell in the high hall tower. 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



Fair Alladine, the earl's one daughter. 

With the kiss of the king on her cheek, is standing 

Alone in her chamber, while the night 

Breathes vainly of rest thru her casement high. 

And far in the East a pale wind gathers 

Itself into hints of roses and dawn, 

"The white stag roams the wood," she sings, 

"Lin-et, lin-o, lin-u," she sings, 

"And the king has heard my voice," she sings, 

"And the king has called me fair!" 

She loosens her hair of its golden braid, 

The cincture of gold from her breast she flings. 

And from her waist the band of gold. 

And her feet from the golden sandals gleaming. 

Oh fair, oh fair is the earl's one daughter. 

And down she kneels on the rushes sweet 

Where her jewel cask foams, and swift her hands 

Burst into the deeps of emerald, amethyst, 

Onyx and opal, jade, ruby, and pearl. 

Of windy sapphire and diamond wild, 

Until she laughs and winds her arms 

With the vine-long chains, and lifts her hands 

Full foaming with gems to her throat so fair. 

A tap at her door — an owl at her casement ; 
She startles, a coronal slips thru her hair. 
A tap at her door of a withered hand; 
She asks at the door for the knocker's name. 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



"The fairy mage of the king am I, 

Old and wise, very wise am I; 

Open, fair Alladine, let me in." 

Fair Alladine listens her heart; says she, 

"Why do you come? why want you in?" 

"You sing like the nightingale, Alladine, 

Open, fair Alladine, let me in." 

The door is open, the withered mage 
Like the green of the morning enters the room; 
He touches the candle and dims its light, 
He sits in the rushes and rolls his eyes. 
"Now speak you fair to a maiden fair, 
Since now I have let you enter in." 
The owl at the casement snips his beak. 
Drops thru the night and is gone. 

"Eat," says he, "the tender tip 
Of the tongue of the nightingale." 

Fair Alladine to hear these words 
In wonder sits and listens her heart. 

"Eat," says he, "the tender tip 
Of the tongue of the nightingale." 

And no more words than these he speaks. 
And the red cock crows, and out at door 
The wizened mage is vanishing. 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 

"But wherefore, wherefore, fairy mage?" — 
"You shall sleep and dream." — he goes. 

She lies her down on her own sweet couch; 
Its touch is full of sleep; she dreams. 
The candle sputters, the witch-hood nods. 
And woe is her for the dream she dreams. 

END OF PART ONE 



105 



ALLADINE 
Part II 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



ALLADINE 

Part II 

The great earl's hunters, a score strong men, 
Are summoned in hall. Their mantles green 
Are tucked thru bugle bands of gold, 
And white their long bows shoulder-slung. 
"Now God be true to bowmen strong! 
And why be we here?" says Fingeret. 
"The beech-nut swells with honey-fat, 
The acorn swells above its cup. 
The fawn is weak on its milky hoof, 
And why be hunters summoned in hall?" 
"It is to let the long shaft fly 
Its white way thru the beech so green," 
Says one, "to slaughter the day-light owl." 

There enters in haste the mighty earl. 
And his eye is great beneath his brow. 
"Hark ye," he says, "my huntsmen all, 
For I speak of my daughter Alladine, 
Whose heart is ghosted and wild and sweet. 
Whose voice is a north-white rill in the sun. 
She sings at morn before the cock. 
She sings at noon, she sings at night; — 
While the glow worm paces the leaf's mildew 
109 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



She sings in her sleep to her casement moon. 
And here be coming from court and hall, 
From castle and court and outmost hall, 
Duke, baron, and count, marquis, and earl, 
And the king's own son to hear her sing. 
Hark ye, huntsmen, break your bows, 
Shear in twain your amber strings. 
Break your shafts, your quivers shatter. 
And off, off all with this beechen green. 
Plain suits of black from this you wear, 
Sandals of fawn-skin softer than leaves. 
And when you hunt, you hunt with the springe." 

"Right noble Earl," cries Fingeret, 
"And I shall break my good long bow! 
God's curse! Ript out of the black ash heart 
By a tempest bolt this bow of mine; 
And so be I struck when on my knee 
I bend it but to shaft and string!" 

The mighty earl he strides one pace, 
Fingeret before him lies, 
The black bow broken across his throat. 
"God's curse! and be you hunter of mine, 
You hear my will ! — For she dreamed a dream. 
And you shall do as I bid you do. 
For she dreamed a dream you cannot know." 
Each hunter snaps his good long bow. 
110 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



"Now get you suits of black, my men, 

Sandals of fawn-skin softer than leaves. 

And get you springes, — the forest thru 

Set them and take the nightingale. 

Nor harm them wholly; but clip their tongues, 

Of each the tip, and bring the tip, 

And these shall be my daughter's food; 

For she dreamed a dream that ye must not know." 

"And well must she sing," cries Fingeret, 
"Who eats of the tongues of nightingales! 
"And well must she sing," cries Fingeret, 
"Who would sweeten the silence she makes but 



The huntsmen are going silent from hall : 

Their long bows lie where they throw them down, 

Their quivers spilling the long shaft lie, 

Low the silver-lipped bugles lie. 

And the gold cords curl in the mantles green. 

"Well must she sing," cries Fingeret, 

"Who sweetens the silence that comes but now!" 

A black wind mumbles beneath the moon 
And fills the dark wood with its sound; 
A shadow is wild on the windy night, 
And a whinnying cavalry break the trees; 
But here are forms more dark than wind 
Who feel the touch of the night, and go 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 

Silently here and silently there, 

Alone beneath the demon boughs, 

Boughs that cross and clap and whine 

Like quarter staves in strong wrist play. 

It is a night of wammer and wailing, 

And over the tarn in the heart of the wood 

The great owl swoops and shakes the mist 

With wail and hoot and snick and sneer; 

And the ghost men rise and shake their feet 

Of slippery bone on the cold tarn's eye, 

And clap their hands and clash with their breasts 

In dance and rondel of nadir hell, 

A dance to a whistle-bitten tune 

Blown shrill from sockets of toothless jaws. 

Blown out of a cave where the tarn-men sleep. 

So thru the night the hunters toil. 
Their springes set, and take the bird 
Of sweetest tongue, and clip the tip 
Of the tongue and loosen the bird again. 
The forest has for all its woe. 
No voice, and silent weeps alone. 

With the wan night over their faces, the hunters, 
Fawn-sandaled, return at the green of the morn- 
ing, 
And the kitchens steam with a golden broth, 
And Alladine, the earl's one daughter. 
Sings and sips of the golden broth. 
112 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Sips and sings and langhs the while 
That the rude swain halts his ox to hear. 

The Prince is coming, the earl Du Care, 

And many a knight and baron bold 

Are coming to hear fair Alladine 

Sing in her hall on festal day. 

Long the hunters have toiled that night, 

And each a nightingale has taken, 

And Alladine has drunk riglit well 

Of the golden broth, and makes to sing 

x\s never she sang a golden song: 

All night an owl at her casement sat, 

Snippin/j the bones of a lesser bird. 

"Wine, wine, red wine! Pour till the horn 

Is rosy at lip, and the red froth winks 

Away in pearls down its slippery side! 

Wine, wine, red wine! And drink, my squires, 

Drink till the burning beaker is cold, 

Down, down to the fairy iVlladine!" 

So the Prince, for the feast is set. 

And he clashes a horn with the earl and drinks. 

The earl's own daughter is rising in hall, — 
But what is that which touches her eye? 
Is it the witch-mist slowly drawn 
Round the woven paces of Death's lank meri 
Who dance to a wliistle-bitten tune? 
113 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Nor sees that eye the huntsman dark 

Who weaves his way among the wood, 

Who bends to the springe, — and the sweet blood 

leaps 
To the heart of the ghasted asphodel! 
For she has dreamed a wondrous dream, 
And she has drunk of the gold-red broth, 
And her sweet tongue lives beneath a song 
That startles the diamond in her red hair, 
And the ruby low in her fairy throat. 

There is a golden forest 

Where the low white breezes blon% 
Where the sun wakes, and the moon wakes. 

And where wild waters flow. 

There is a golden forest, 

And it is fair to see; 
For flowers are there and birds are there. 

And the white winds are free. 

There is a golden forest, 

And who would call me fair. 
And walk with me and talk with me 

On the sweet green pathways there? 

There is a golden forest 

Where the white wind is low, 
And the full white moon, and the white flower. 

And where I must go. 
114 



The Garden of Seven Tree,' 



The Prince is standing with his eye 

Right round and wholly bright to see; 

His wine glass tips, and his jewelled hand 

Lies burning in the red, red wine. 

"Fair Alladine, I do entreat, 

What means your song of white and low?" 

Her hand at her throat, she speaks no word; 

Fair Alladine is sinking in hall; 

The great earl starts, and on his breast 

She sinks and weeps a woeful tear. 

The guests rise up and quickly go. 

"My own fair daughter, Alladine, 
Why weep ye now so sore, so sore?" 
"My father, my father, I do not know; 
But the owl all night at my casement sat 
Snipping the bones of a lesser bird; 
And my voice is faint within my throat. 
My tongue too weighted with gold to sing. 
Ah woe is me for the dream I dreamed!" 

The night is come, and Alladine 
Is lonely in her high hall tower; 
Her sick heart fills her breast with tears, 
And a naked wind stalks moaning round. 
From far she seems to hear a wailing 
That bites at her ear like a viper green : 
And prayer comes thick within her throat. 
But her tongue hungers and cannot pray, 
115 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And the rushes sweeten beneath her tears 

As she kneels and hungers and strives to pray: 

"Oh, Mary, my Mother," she strives to pray, 

"Oh, Mary, my Mother!" she can no more. 

For still from far she hears a wailing 

That bites at her heart like a viper green, 

And her heart so broken and sweet with pain 

Rises stark and strikes in her breast 

A bitter stroke: she makes to go. 

The candle sputters, the witch-hood nods 

To the black draught drawn thru the open door. 

And Alladine creeps down the stairs. 
Along the mumbling hall she creeps. 
Into the night of cold deep stars. 
And wakes the porter at the gate. 
"And who are you?" "Sir, I am one 
Who has done a mighty wrong." She goes. 

Into the forest right bitterly 

She leads in humble fear her way, 

And ever about her the silence drips 

Like black dew down from the rotted bough, 

And timidly ever she stops to listen, 

But the silence weeps and on she goes. 

No voice makes sweet the whole night wood. 

And Alladine is sinking down 

Into the thick and heavy dark 

At the mouth of the cave where the tarn-men sleep; 

116 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And out of the cave the whispering wail 
Comes like thin arms round her, sinking. 
"And ye must sing," the whisper wails, 
"Sing to a forest made dumb for thee." 

Then Alladine lifts up her eye 

All in the forest at midnight hour, 

And the mists like long sloughed viper skins 

Are coiled round the dead men dancing there 

A lank bone dance, and round and round 

The dead men go, and round and round, 

Their white feet slapping the black tarn's eye, 

And in their hands wan wisps of fire 

Which they hurl with a tooth-whistle down the 

wind. 
Was ever such a sight before 
Spread to a lonely maiden's eye.'* 
"And ye must sing," the whisper wails, 
"Sing to a forest made dumb for thee." 

"Oh Mother of Christ," thinks Alladine, 
"And sing I must, but how shall I sing?" 

Then on a bow the jasper moon 
Set its green feet and swung o'er the meer, 
And silent shapes came one by one 
And sat in the dark of the jasper moon. 
To see these Alladine must weep, 
And the tarn-men stretch and chatter and wail 
117 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And whistle a black wind thru her tears : 

"Oh Mother of Christ," she moans, "sweet Mother, 

As I am Motherless, help me now!" 

But the great owl hoots along the mist. 
Bearing an echo of hell in his beak; 
He snickers and snaps his lips of bone. 
He sits above her own sweet head. 
Snipping the bones of a lesser bird. 
"And ye must sing," the whisper wails, 
"Sing to a forest made dumb for thee!" 

Then Alladine lifts up her eye; 
Their good tears take the moon's own light, 
And soft her heart in her bosom trembles 
For the silent shapes beside the moon. 
And nothing thinks she of aught save these. 
And sweetly she weeps and weeps her woe. 
"Oh, proud have I been in my glittering hall, 
A sinner in scarlet and white and gold ! 
For a selfish joy I have wounded the world. 
And out of the sweet of the forest's tongue 
I have made a food for my vanity. 
Ah, that a king should call me fair, 
And a sweet prince speak his love of me. 
All for the vain, vain songs I sang! 
I have not loved; my part is woe. 
God have pity on my woe! 
Mary, my Mother, comfort me!" 
118 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Comforted of her sin and woe, 
She tenderly lifts her voice to sing: 

Love would wake in the morning, 
Glittering, high, and vain; 

Love must sleep in the evening, 
And sleep in pain. 

Sing not so low of dreaming. 

For love shall come again. 
Haply under the morning, 

And clean from pain. 

Down sink the tarn-men in the meer; 

The coiled mists thin and fail and go; 

x\nd the great ov>d buffets the night with wings 

That are full of flight and windy fear; 

And the moon sweeps up, and the nightingales 

Burst from the bough in chorus full, 

A golden hymning of love eternal. 

Till out of the night a white hand reaches 

And presses the brow of Alladine. 

The Prince he hunts the forest thru; 
The castle bells have tolled her flight; 
And the porter swears a ghost went bj^ 
And touched his keys. The miglity earl, 
He cries to horse, and all are out. 
But the Prince he hunts the forest thru; 
119 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



His heart is wild with bitter pain: 
"Oh, that I might see her face 
But once to charm my bitter pain!" 

He nears the tarn. The sun is high; 

It burns the dew in the violet, 

It burns along her dreaming brow 

And round her finger tips in the leaves. 

He trails his purple scarf in the wind, 

He gathers her lite in his own true arms: 

"Oh, Alladine, fair Alladine, 

Waken, waken, fair Alladine!" 

But she wakes not yet; and when she wakes 

A pure white tear is in her eye, — 

Low she kneels and listens her heart, 

And the Prince is kneeling with her to pray. 

The king's great earl he sees them there 

And kneels with his men that all may pray. 

THE END 



120 



THE SEEKERS 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKERS 

To Hibbies of Same-House 

The curtain goes up like mist lifted by morning 
wind. A stage, heaped with a living gray 
light, is revealed. The foreground is a section of 
a wide street which runs obliquely from left to 
right. From this street rises a massive wall of 
astounding dimensions, and along its heavy sitr- 
faces thick lusters ripen continuously into deep 
tone. A little to the right is a gate of wonderful 
proportions. It is set in an arch in the wall and 
is held by hinges and locks of corded gold. Upon 
the gate there are runes written in thick letters, set 
about by gems which glow and gleam. 

Hidden in the gray light there are little laughters, 
the faint flutings of delicate voices, the snap of far 
steel cymbals, singings and chauntings. Forming 
themselves from the light, wings appear, ascending 
and descending, moving doion the street, clustering 
about the gate and tapping it with the agate lamps 
suspended at their tips. At times the wijigs melt 
thru the gate and seem to pass beyond. At times, 
and unproclaimcd. Voices chaunt and Symbols 
sing out of the light. 



123 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



A delicate strain of inusic which takes voice in 
one word: 

VOICE 

Beauty. 

There is an opal flash of a wing, and the music 
leads away from the word, to return with timid 
echoes from every part of the stage: 

ECHOES 

Beauty — Beauty — Beauty — Beauty — 

VOICE 

Exceeding Loveliness. 

ECHOES 

Exceeding Loveliness — Exceeding 



VOICE 

The Heart of God. 

ECHOES 

The Heart of God — The Heart — 
The Heart 

A timid iridescence pales radiantly center stage. 
A Symbol sings. Light music blends in about the 
voice. 

124 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



SYMBOL 

There is a drop of rose blood 

Hidden on a star, 

Hidden in a cavern of beauty, 

Hidden on a radiant island 

Set about with radiant waters. 

Hidden, hidden, hidden 

A drop of rose blood on a star. 

A thicker light appears in a cluster of jrimfs at 
another part of the stage, from which a Voice 
chaunfs: 

VOICE 

In t!ie pale, hoarse caverns of time 

Seek for the echo of seas, 
Seek for the sands that crept from I lie clime 

Of the lavender orchid breeze. 
Seek for th; shell that is purple 

From the press of the unfathomed tide, 
And for the green sea shadow 

That sleeps like a bride 
From innocent lands. 
Sleeps on the lavender echoless sands. 

SYMBOI„ 

Seek and seek and seek again : 
The pearl of longing is the price of pain. 
125 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



VOICE 

Star wind, star wind 

Is flaming thru the mist flowers 

In the gardens of the mind. 

Terrible it is to seek, 

Terrible it is to seek, 

Terrible it is to seek, but more terrible to find. 

VOICE, answering 

The mist is but young witches' hair 

Grown gray with fright, 

Pulled thru the night 

By nails on the finger-tips of shivering breezes : 

All is fair and all is fair, 

But there is a midnight wind that freezes. 

A tide of color, like some heraldic influence 
moves across the stage and washes the walls and the 
gate. 

VOICE, proclaiming 

A strip of gold, a street, 
A gate from which no dews can fall. 
Higher than sunrise light, a wall, 
And seven barren beggars meet. 

Seven beggars come on, moving slowly among 
the wings. On their heads they wear crowns of 
uplifted hands. They are dressed in robes of 
126 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



one -piece. The colors of their robes are green, 
yoid, yurple, shimmer-dusk, red, vari-colored, and 
black with white. They sit in a semi-circle before 
the gate, claspinq their hands over their eyes. 

SYMBOL, singing from above 

Hidden, hidden, hidden yet, 

On a star, on a star, 

Hidden is the beauty you never can forget. 

The rose blood where the orchid shadows are. 

SECOND SYP^BOL, fvom abovc 

Seek and seek and seek again. 
Seek and seek and seek again. 

A CHORUS OF VOICES chaunting down the street 

Come you early, come you late. 
He who seeks must sit and wait. 
Eyes that seek and see must close. 
No one knows and no one knows: 
No one knows and no one knows 
The dark within the shadow and the light within 
the rose. 

After a movement of wings, the beggars speak. 
Not until they have spoken do they remove their 
clasped hands from before their eyes. 
127 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



FIRST 

I seek for Life. {Green light) 

SECOND 

I seek for Death. (Gold light) 

THIRD 

I seek for Longing. (Purple light) 

FOfRTH 

I seek for Sleep. (Shimmer-dusk light) 

FIFTH 

I seek for Pain. (Red light) 

SIXTH 

I seek for Broken- Things. (Vari-colored light) 

SEVENTH 

I seek. (A shadow with a white wing in it passes) 

Again the fluting of delicate voices, suggesting 
violets chanting the matins of the sun, or lilies in 
chorus like the nuns of Verdi. 
128 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

These voices take the color of a whisper 
And lead me in a leash of pearls. 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

I feel 
The tug of wings about my eyes, the lift 
Upon my lashes of some fingers slight 
As filanjents of eider. 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

Potent, too, 
As dawn-dews swelling wide with sun. 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

Brother, 
No morning influence here, but such as conies 
From evening buds of primrose. The cordial 
Ripple of some dark wine I scent, shot thru 
With shadow-shafts of breeze, and lifted 
Curving above a valley bosom-grown 
With violets. 

THE SEEKER FOR DEATH 

What is this place? My eyes, 
Unrr sted from the dust, amaze themselves 
To look up into wings. 

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The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

This is the place 
Of the great portal and the wall. I feel 
Already that I've followed out the full 
Length of my way. Yet now I burn the more 
To know what lies beyond. 

THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

These years I've walked 
Upon my heart. My foot is weary of 
Its pulse. The portals of my journey have 
Been many; but they opened not unto 
The thing I sought : always the waste, and way 
Boiling to the remotest verge of space, 
Hoarding its tidal heaviness in dim 
Disastrous sunsets. Here against the deep 
Russet and gold of this embossed gate, 
I bend the passion of my quest. And yet, 
Here is a dimness in the very eye 
Of light, the terror of the last assay. 

THE SEEKER 

Our way of weary distances is past: 
The dumb soul's deep disturbance, the great fast 
Of years, the pilgrim passion, and the urge 
Of our own planet tide whose deeps submerge 
The sensible will, and leave the spacious power 
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Of our own minds o'erwhelmed in vague and dread 
Rushes of swelling cosmos, thru the dead 
Horror of unknown forces, — these and all 
Are swept at last against this massive wall. 

THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

The sweet influence of wings, of songs 
Caught in the open lips of echo, and of light 
More mellow than the girdle of the sky, 
Presses me here to rich delirium. 
Oh broken heart, and heart of broken love, 
Here is your happiness before this gate! 
Heavy the scroll-like portal, and the script 
Of God, and yet 

THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

We are but beggars all. 
Before this last thick-lustered gate, before 
This wall like mountains piled on sunrise, let 
Us sit. For here is symbol of our lives: 
A windy street, a locked gate, and a wall 
Higher than vision. All my being rolls 
To the drum notes of vast voids beaten upon 
By clubs of thunder. From the hollow midst 
Of Chaos' stumbling heart I own a pulse 
Pushing my life to verges vast and dim. 
There to my fearful eyes the distances. 
Distinct in nothing, show such awful forms, 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



Huge, vague, straining with trouble, that my soul 
Jumps from me in somnambulistic terror, 
Seeking to fashion all, compose the dream. 

THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

Brothers, I seek the broken things of life 

That I may fashion them to beauty. From 

Whole things no new perfection can be made, 

Nor quiet loveliness nor loveliness 

Startling itself to tremulous unfolding. 

But give me a lost shard of star, a flake 

Of moony crispness, swift-cut sectors of 

The space entwisted comet's beard, a flash 

Of fin-carved cataract, a drop of night. 

And such things fairies carry in their eyes 

When they're most swift in love, and pixie jewels 

Stolen from a cache under huge rainbow roots, 

Give me but these, and in the single turns 

Of my heart's radiant kaleidoscope, 

I'll show you form on form of beauty, rare 

Invested individualities 

Of loveliness. Give me but liroken things. 

A SYMBOL, suddenly singing 

On the hearth of Vega 

Lay a flute of flame. 
On the hearth of Vega 

A flute whose stops were spurting fire. 
132 



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Why are all the ashes 
Upon the hearth of Vega? 
Ashes, ashes, ashes. 
And a dead desire! 



THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

Earth, gowned with night perpetual, footing 

The winds of infinite waste, distemperate 

With reeling powers, and hugely interlocked 

In the minuet of God's remorse, tosses 

Her bulk against the breast of space, muttering 

In dervish madness her eruptional pain. 

I who am born of dream-wrath, storms, and 

powers 
Eruptional, attended dreadfully 
By the incubus of a pre-natal being, 
I who am hauled toward some drear end by an 

influence 
Felt numbly and horribly, I, whose fevered flesh. 
Bitten by ulcer, dug by cancer, torn 
By mandibles tarantular, yet hangs 
Flapping against its bone rack, I, brothers, 
Lift my sore hands beneath these healing wings 
To catch their wafted medicine. It is 
Not and it is not and it is. 



133 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR DEATH 

Within 
The black heart and beneath the eyehd gray, 
Engendering influences of eternal cold, 
Begetting on each other, brought me forth. 
Some finger, rubbing thru the dust of tombs. 
Touched me to quickness and to thought; so that 
I rose in my blank swaddling cerements there, 
Peered thru the distances beyond the dawn. 
Into the red mist of a giant heart. 
From thence there crawled toward me infinite 
Pulsings and forms veiled foolishly. These crept 
In thick amazement to my very feet. 
Like virgin worms in beatific fright. 
Then, striking their heads thru that thin pall 
Which hid what lay behind my back, they rose, 

rose 
Like myriad phoenixes gifted with flames 
And golden shoutings, rose and swept into 
The vast increasing glory that piled its 
Billowy substance in refulgence heaped 
Against an ivory throne. Like tides they swept. 
Was this a dream.'* I know not, but 1 seek. 

There is a great music above the gate, a concen- 
tration of wings into a pearly moon, and then a 
quartet of Voices chaunts. The beggars cross their 
hands over their hearts. 



134 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



VOICES 

Beauteous blood of agonies, 
Rushing to marble pallor of rose, 
Catching the form and spirit of snows, 
Holding them melted, delicately still. 
Beauteous blood of agonies. 
Here is a pearl to drop to your deeps. 

Here is a pearl to drop to your deeps, 
And the plummet soul of God shall strike 
Down thru your deeps, with chisel- wings carving, 
Carving the marble pallor of rose, 
Carving the forms and spirits of snows, 
Carving them, carving them till they are free. 
Free, God-wrought from the beauty and blood. 
The beauty and blood of agony. 

The beggars uncross their hands, lift their eyes 
about them, and finally bend their looks upon the 
Seventh, who rises and speaks earnestly. The light 
upon the gate diffuses itself into a general richness. 

THE SEEKER 

In Life nor Death nor Longing, nor in Sleep 
Nor Pain nor Broken-Things, nor deep in deep, 
Nor high in high lies the true quest: behold. 
The runes upon the gate are script of gold! 
To seek and therefore still to seek, indeed 
135 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Eternally to seek is text and creed 

For beggardom. Our perfect sorrows smite 

Our blood, and tlien are wrought to deeds of light. 

Tlie most dumb wonder is our wisdom. Ask 

Meekly for ah in notliing, only ask 

The fitness to desire all things greatly, 

And those most which most are unattainable. 

The lavender light an the gate quietly grmvs 
intense as, from above, there sounds a chorus of 
Voices and Symbols. The Seeker presses his ope?/ 
hands against his bosom {hands as white as lilies 
in a field of night) and remains standing icith 
closed eyes until the conclusion of the song. 

CHORUS OP" VOICES AND SYMBOLS 
I 

The naked wings of light are lifting. 

Upon their tips of calcedon, 

Agate flames of mossy dawn; 
And the glory is drifting, drifting 

Down the walls. 
Tike an orchid shadow sifting 

The moonlight as it falls. 

II 

Mossy are tlie flames and like bracken waving 
highly 
On a hill of sunrise naked to the sun, 
136 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Mossy are the flames and like ferns and flowers 
waving 
In auroral breezes fresh and rare with sun, 
Mossy are the flames that strike the hoary gate. 
Sinking into amethyst and burning into gold, 
Glancing blunted from the hinges, from the huge 
and heavy letters 
Of the script runes that are never, never told. 

Ill 

Will the hinges ever swing 

When the wing tips touch them? 
Will they shatter all the lamps of agate 

Into shards of dim disaster? 
Faster, faster, faster 
The orchid light is rushing down the walls: 

Win the hinges ever, ever, ever swing? 

The beggars give expression to dumb agitation 
and awe. Quietly the light increases to serene opal 
and diamond pearl. 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

What portent rides the music of this chant? 
What indefinable presagement? Warm 
And opiate richness floats that lovely way 
My dreams come. Tumbling fountains of brave 
sound 

137 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Are blown to mist of dulcet symphony, 
And wander down in dews upon my soul. 
I feel at last along the garden paths 
Of mind, the tread of that loved being who 
Shall burst the chrysalis of dream, and stand 
Awful and perfect to my very eye. 

THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

What wings are here ! These dripping tips of speed 
Have surely struck to shards the altar vase 
Of Lord Jehovah's deepest wine, and now, 
Eager with vermeil tincture, eat raw space 
Empty of gloom. Their carved agate lamps. 
With crystal mosses burn like star-spray. See, 
The light sweeps off the hoar frost from the walls. 
And inlays the hoar gate with ferny fire, 
Lavender gold, and purple porphyry. 

THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

And down the street, whose way for me has been 
A hard way swept with spittle-dust and wind, 
A maiden angel sunbeam dances fast 
Beside the happy, happy heart of youth. 

CHORUS, repeating in the distance 

Will the hinges ever swing 
When the wing tips touch them? 
Will the hinges ever, ever, ever swing? 
138 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

Within my heart I feel a sorrow weep, 

Like some young babe weeping within the womb. 

Fearing its birth. 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

And trouble lies against 
My soul, like oleander blossoms blown. 
Smothering sweetly. 

THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

Trembles now the light 
Over the gate? The great runes start and swell 
In new conception of portentous truth. 

THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

And lo ! the wings strike ever on the runes 
And dash their tips of calcedon to flakes 
Of rose. Against the portal's base there lie 
Dim shards of agate from the wrecked lamps 

strewn : 
There let me kneel and pray. 

{He kneels before the gate) 

THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

Vague, vague and awful were the words they sang: 

" Will the hinges ever swing? "—What lies beyond? 

139 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR DEATH 

The mystery of death ! 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

Of Hfe the secret and the thing I seek. 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

Beyond there is a garden of dark hhes 
Swinging with pale dew at their hps, and streams 
Of ebon waters flowing thru dim banks 
Of asphodel. 

THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

Perchance there are no distances 
Beyond, so that the hand may touch the fruit 
And body of the soul's full eye, the dreams 
Of vision and the images of sense. 

THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

This runed and lustered gate will never swing 
But to reveal the teeth of engineries 
Munching the world; and that huge goatish power 
Which milks the noonday from the mountain peaks, 
And bunts those breasts of earth flat to the plain. 

The Seeker for Broken-Things rises, letting 
drift thru the light two handfnls of agate shards. 
He addresses the Seeker for Pain in excited reproof. 

140 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

Beyond are fairies seated on wind flowers, hair- 

bells, 
Primroses and daffodils, all madly capped 
With pluckt inverted violets, with prankt 
Nasturtiums, and columbines dripping 
Red and gold honey down their backs. Lovely 
Their little feet dangling in pans of dews 
Which sweet fern grasses treasure from the stars. 

THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

The gate is shut! 

OTHERS 

The gate is shut! The gate is shut! 

THE SEEKER 

I will lift up my voice against some wing 
Whose disembodied flight culls the pure air 
Of so much wonder, and will ask that thing 
Whose answer must reveal what's hidden there. 

(A Symbol comes on surrounded by heavy light) 

Oh, gracious influence, pause ai'.d lower down 
Your flaming tips of flight! Let no dark frown 
Dimming your agate lusters, strike these meek 
And barren beggars here who only seek 
Beauty and balm and truth and mystery. 
141 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Tell us, what is this gate whose history, 
So heavily written, weighs the eye of sense 
To an iinprofited close? 

THE SYMBOL 

If all you known were unknown, 
It were better, better far 
Than to know the things which are 
Beyond this wall of symbol stone. 

Dome and spire and minaret, 
Never yet and never yet 
Rose alone and cut their beauty 
From the pallor of the dawn. 
Beggars, beggars, now begone; 
For the gate may swing 
At the touching of a wing; 
At the touching of a wing. 
The gate may swing. 

As the Symbol vanishes, a chorus of voices 

Sit in the dust of the street. 
Barren beggars, it is meet. 
Spread your hands in prayer. 
Cup them to the winged air, 
Clasp them to your eyes and hearts, 
E'er the mystery departs. 
Barren beggars, barren beggars, 
Sil in the dust of the street. 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOB PAIN 

These voices yell like cymbals, or like iron 
Tambourines, in the cave of that great Satyr, 
God, the Circe-spouse and swineherd of us 
All. Whips us squealing thru the blackness, 
Feeds us husks of cruel wonder, leads us 
To deep troughs of bitter admiration 
Which reflect our tusks and jowls. Brothers, 
Broken is my speech — my heart is broken ! 

(He sits apart, weeping) 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

Sweeping toward the gate, I see a host 
Of veiled forms such as often we beheld 
Pass in dim barges down the ghostly ways 
That are the doubles of the brooks of heaven! 

THE SEEKER FOB DEATH 

And lo! they melt within its substances 
And seem to pass beyond. The hinges hold, 
Grasping among the runes, their noble power 
Against motion. Fear throws her shattering wave 
Like folds of doom around my soul. I'll go 
And touch the gate. 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

The wings may strike the lock! 
143 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

It is more fit 
That I should be the first to touch the gate. 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

Do I not hear a crying from the walls? 

THE SEEKER FOR DEATH 

You hear the winds dropping exhausted at your 
feet. 

THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

You hear the angels' lovely feathers 
Patting the tender spaces of Paradise. 

THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

Go not to touch the gate! Sit in the dust! 

A VOICE FROM THE GATE 

Read my runes, 
Count vay jewels. 
Read my runes 
Or ever you come to me. 

THE SEEKER 

The jewels are infinite, the runes are oM 
Bedded in fossil flowers of ancient gold: 
144 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Truth cannot be except it be but so. 
These scripts were better read before we go 
Too near the gate. Hark how the iron song. 
Chorused with prophet voices, volleys along 
In full returning echoes: "It is meet: 
Oh, barren beggars, sit upon your feet. 

THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

Dearer than truth, than Christ's unanswered 

question 
Is the thing I seek. I will not turn away. 

{He goes toward the gate as if to open it) 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

Do I not hear a crying from the walls? 

There soimds aloud a crying voice like an angry 
eagle rushing from her eerie. The Seeker for Long- 
ing is struck with a pause, his hand outstretched 
ioioard the gate. All the beggars look up in sad 
terror. 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

There is a sword falling thru space, a voice 
Singing mightily at its tip! 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

It is a dream ! 

145 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

It is a steel sword al unhanded, swift. 
It's flaming down the archway of the wall: 
If it shou'd strike the lock ! 

THE SEEKER 

Lo! Lo! It strikes! 

The beggars cover their eyes and kneel, facing the 
gate. There is a great flash of fire that blasts the 
color from the walls and the portal vhich like a 
slab of slate swings back revealing a blank loaste 
of utter nothingness. After a silence the beggars 
take their hands from their eyes and one by one 
put their croivns onto the earth before them. 

THE SEEKER FOR LIFE 

I see nothing beyond! 

THE SEEKER FOR DEATH 

Nor I! 

THE SEEKER FOR PAIN 

Nor I! O! 

THE SEEKER FOR LONGING 

I see a wide space 

THE SEEKER FOR SLEEP 

Blown full of poppies, gray 
Sunken into pillows. 

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The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE SEEKER FOR BROKEN-THINGS 

Gcd makes but perfect things! {Weeps) 

THE SEEKER 

I am content. 

They sit silent. A Symbol, most beautiful, comes 
on, singing. 

The light has gone from the walls, 

And the heavy runes are gray; 
But you have your hearts, you have your hearts. 

And you'll have them alway. 

(Lights softer) 

Oh, Life and Death and Longing, 

Oh, beggars, Pain and Sleep 
And you, the Christ of Broken-Things, 

Never weep and never weep; 
For you have your hearts, you have your hearts, 

And you'll have them alway. 

The Influence passes, and a rich light crowds in. 
A lovely music sounds the emotion of spiritual 
happiness 

THE SEEKER 

I am content. 



147 



THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TREES 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



THE GARDEN OF SEVEN TREES 

To P — of the golden foot, who has journeyed 
here, a compa?iion. 



elements of the poem 

Man 

Seven Spirits of QuestiOxV 

Two Good Shepherds: 

The Golden Shepherd of Souls 
The Silver Shepherd of Flesh 

Gold Sheep 

Silver Sheep 

Voice of the Garden 

Voice of the Spaces 

Voice of the Suns 

Voice of the Abysses 

A Voice in the Garden 

God 

The Basket Carriers 

The Universes 

The Lovely World 

Music and Radiance 



151 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Scene and Statement 

Among the Upper Spaces and above the Abysses, 
there comes out of the blackness, distinct with dia- 
mond outline, the Garden of Seven Trees. Near 
the upper verge of the Garden, beneath the Great 
Tree, sits Man. From his place he views immedi- 
ately before him the Field of Bright Space, from the 
further end of which rises the Mystic Mountain. 
To his right and left he views the Endless Expanses 
quarried by the Abysses and overhung by the Upper 
Spaces whose suns pour down an endless light thru 
the darkness and into the deeps. 

Behind Man lies the Garden, a place full of radi- 
ance and all manner of beauty. Above this Garden 
hover the Seven Spirits of Question, and in the 
Garden are the two Good Shepherds with their 
Flocks. 

To the right of Man is one particularly deep 
Abyss, into which continuously is plunging the fall 
of the Red Sun. At the bottom of the Abyss, indis- 
tinct in the ivarm feathering mist, is a world which 
beats like a heart, the Lovely World. From this 
world, breasting the cataract of light. Thoughts in 
gold and silver flashings rise and are led into the 
Garden by one of the Seven Spirits. 

Man, gowned in a glowing gray garment, sandled 
with pale dusty slippers, rests on a mound of green 
gold, 

152 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



VOICE OF THE GARDEN 

Glorious is the garden of radiant pastures. 

Cool to the silver lip of the flesh, 

And warm to the golden tongue of the soul. 

Its mounds of loveliness are the feeding place of 

beauty; 
The foot of the hungry is refreshed at the root of 

the grasses, 
Refreshed beneath the flower of the grasses 
And among the fallen fruit of lilies. 

Glorious is the garden with its seven trees, 

Mighty to take the wonder of the suns. 

Mighty to stand in the spaces. 

Their arms are curled cataracts of gold 

Reaching upward into the immensities; 

Their heads are rounded mountains of topaz; 

Their roots are veins of rich ore grappling the 

abysses : 
Glorious are the seven trees of the garden. 

Glorious is the garden with its flocks, 

Its flocks like leaves that are white with the new 

moon at morning. 
Its flocks like leaves that are fat with sunlight. 
The lovely care of the Good Shepherds. 
Their silver feet are in among the lilies. 
Their golden feet trample among the roses, 
153 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Their voices are diamonds and rubies in the low 

bushes, 
Gems and trumpets in the grasses: 
Glorious is the garden with its flocks. 

Over the garden are the Seven Spirits; 

Strong are their feet with talons, 

Their wings are mighty. 

Over the garden are the Seven Spirits; 

They carry their joy in their beaks. 

Their birth was afar off. 

Pilgrim, with the dust of the distances 

Piled like wan silver in the folds of your garment. 

Rest in the garden. 

VOICE OF THE SPACES 

I am the Spaces. 

My bosom is full of the breath of the Mighty, 
Black and sounding are the deeps of my bosom 
Ribbed with the white bones of the vast uttermost. 
In me are lost the abysses and the universes; 
They call to each other and cease in the midst 

of me. 
Like blind glowing worms are the round-toiling 

systems, 
Spinning a frail silk and casing each other 
With laces of silver, with gowns wrought golden. 
I am the Spaces ! And in my bosom 
I toss with ray panting the suns of the ages. 
154 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

Pilgrim, with eyes that are dark, dark with 

searching, 
Touch with your vision the sweep of ray beauty. 
And rest in the garden. 

VOICE OF THE SUNS 

Our food is the will of God, 
Our light is the purpose of the Supreme. 
Over the heavy-mouthed abysses, 
Bellowing and deep down booming 
The rumbling thunder of our cataracts, 
We hang forever. 

Out of us rushes forever 

The fleeting steep gulfs of wild glory; 

The wonder and wonder 

And might of our thunder, 

Never and never shall fail. 

We fill the abysses and wild wildernesses 

With glory and beauty and praise; 

The steep glowing gulfs of our glory 

Never and never shall fail. 

Ours is the rainbow 

Sinking low 

And outward gleaming; 

Ours is the radiance, the brilliancy streammg 

Into iris and mauve 

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The Garden of Seven Trees 



And madder inwove 

With diamond lace and pearl mist 

Far below; 

Ours is the joy of the day and the deeps 

And the steeps 

Where we list 

To break our breasts open into a rose. 

Pilgrim, we are the Suns. 

We eat of the baskets of mercy and spread our 

power. 
Rest in the garden. 

VOICE OF THE ABYSSES 

Our lips are dabbled black with space. 
Our teeth are green glaciers shocking and grinding. 
Our throats are red volcanoes groaning 
Eruption of lavas and rubies. 

In our bellies lie the green white world 
Feathered about by the wings of Jehovah; 
Blue steel is the shield of Jehovah above them, 
Blue steel jewelled rarely, a marcliing place 
For jade-pale stars, heeled with wonder. 
Striking the night jet into red beauty; 
There pass also grey panoplied armies 
Of oceans abundant, clouds doubling and march- 
ing. 

156 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

We are the quarries, the pits of beauty; 
We scar all space, we swallow the suns; 
Our breath is a whirlblast ridden with rubies; 
The deeps of our blackness are fastened with 
flame. 

Pilgrim, in thy foot is dominion, 

And in thy breast is a heart for terror: 

The beard of Jehovah is blown thru the suns; 

There are mighty ways outward. 

MAN 

Pilgrim of the immensities, I have 
Attained thru the wide dreaming of my soul 
This place of beauty. Here my great desire 
Feeds full of wonder, and my heart beats to 
A worthy worship of the infinite. 
No longer now my straining sense divines 
Things greatly hidden which it may not know, 
Majestic things even at the finger tips 
Of mind, yet moving outward into mist, 
Ungraspable. What horror was it then, 
When underneath the gripping incubus 
Of my strange inability, I felt 
About me hosts of unknown things, discerned 
By the soul's fine antennae, but not known! 
Objects of beauty still beyond the eye, 
Music wrought subtly, still beyond the ear, 
157 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

And every sense in agony tantalized 

By wistful wild imaginations. So 

A frenzy grew upon me till at last 

In a hot twisted darkness fire began 

To spurt fierce lightnings round my mind, and in 

The blackness of pine-mumbling winds there 

rushed 
Fountains of fairy sweetness cool from heaven 
And made deep wells within my bosom, soft 
As rest. Then a new mind came upon me, 
And what was once deception vanished quite, 
And what desire proved thru its longing stood 
Instant and cherishable. Thereupon 
The limit of my easy ranging thought 
Slipped out from world to world, from universe 
To universe, thru space to outer space 
Even as it willed. Union with God remains. 

FIRST SPIRIT OF QUESTION, FROM ABOVE 

Oh, astounded mortal, 

With the azure of agony circling your brilliant 
eyes. 

Unfettered here from sense, whose element is 
sense 

And limitation, listen to a voice 

Which elsewhere has been heard. — Remember yet 

That ere you strove with the Powers and con- 
quered them and came 
158 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

Beneath this tree, how to your infant eye 

The systems coiled away. Now rising above your 

self, 
You here mistake your littleness of sense 
For the mightiest verges of outroaring space. — 
These wings and those of all my sisters have 

grown wan 
Beyond the little margins, and our eyes. 
Born out of space and testing easily 
The ever-flowing leagues, saw yet no ending. 

MAN 

Bring now the concourse of your sisters round. 
And we shall judge whether their wings or these 
My thoughts have striven outward most. I deem 
No feather, even of spirits, has the lightness 
Of vision, no, nor yet the strength of faith, 
Nor yet the swiftness of my keen desire. 
Within my bosom there is that which owns 
A Father, whom I seek. Eternal Beauty 
Has put his spittle-moistened clay upon 
My eyes even at the womb's mouth. Go 
And call. 

The Spirit vanishes toward the midst of the Gar- 
den. There is a sound of a red trumpet's winding, 
and then a shivering of the atmosphere as the Seven 
Spirits descend and stand about the base of the 
mound of green gold. 

159 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

FIRST SPIRIT 

Lo! here we stand whose wings even now 
Shook all the spaces. 

MAN 

Harpy-angels, terrible and beautiful! 
What is your property? 

FIRST SPIRIT 

To question all that is — 

SECOND SPIRIT 

All that is not. 

MAN 

No more than this.'' 

THIRD SPIRIT 

And more than more: to sit upon our trees 
And guard into the Garden, flesh and soul. 
Those beings from the Lovely World who rise 
Against the cataracts of the great Red Sun. 

FOURTH SPIRIT 

And then to watch and wait, to watch and wait ! 

FIFTH SPIRIT 

To hover and to hover, — 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



SIXTH SPIRIT 

Or to go 

Outward thru the rivers of the blackness 

And the tides of darkness and the falls of thunder, 

Outward to the regions where the spaces pale and 

dim, 
And brighten into A^oices crying wonder. 
Into mists where failing oceans join the utter white 

of distance, and beyond. 

SEVENTH SPIRIT 

Tip to tip your wings spread outward 

As you would above the foam moons 

Calling on the mystic ocean. 

Fiery tip to tip surround him 

Till he doubts no more the question 

That has gone beyond his dreaming. 

They spread their loings tip to tip and so stand 
enclosing Man in wan green light. 

MAN 

Your wings have touched the beautiful, but these 
Your breasts above your hearts are pale. The 

night 
Has fallen round your faces, and the night 
Hangs in the hollows of your throats. Yet deeper 
In your wing pits is a ghastliness, 
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And these your eyes that you bend close upon me 
Wear scales as do a sloughing serpent's eyes. 
And with these would you see? The might of all 
Your wings is blind, and darkly have you spoken. 

FIRST SPIRIT 

We speak the darkness of the question. 
Outward swept we. Thinly failing 
The space-bows bent around us, on whose backs 
Great stars rode, and under whose dim arches 

swung 
Milky eternities of infant light. 
There working thru the black and hidden roots 
That fed the fearful heaven, we descried 
A saffron emptiness. Ah, pale indeed 
The mystery we carry in our wing pits, 
Closest to our hearts! Boast you against the 

deeps.'* 

MAN 

It was not here to boast I wrought my way. 
But to ease all my worship in some prayer 
Whose loveliness might equal that same Beauty 
You know npt, and to whom I pray. In all 
Your coursing over all the tides, your sweeping 
Circles round the ocean's failing foam. 
Saw you as yet my Father and my Mother 
And my Brother? Saw you as yet this Beauty? 
Or sounded yet this Infinite with your wings? 
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INIake not yourselves so terrible, but answer. 
For well I know this Being is, tho yet 
I see Him not. 

FIRST SPIRIT 

Nor ever shall. Among the filling tides 

There is no place for such an One. He wrought 

In other times a huger universe 

Of vast and awful powers whose waging strength 

Swimg upward into ruin; He is gone. 

The ruin only battles down the waste, 

Illimitable in concourse working war. 

MAN 

Go! Now I see your sense is little and 
Your darkly flaming bulks clipped in wan fire 
Are hollow, wanting anthems, wanting soul. 
Almighty are the spaces, temple-roomed 
To give eternal echo to man's worship. 
The halleluiahs to the Mighty from 
Earth's trumpeting hills re-chorus here their joy, 
Doubling the majesty of praise. Even now 
The lilies break beyond you and the palms 
Flash golden. Hosts of lovely brothers come 
Bearing hosannas in their bosoms. White 
The space before me gleams. Behold! Behold! 
Ten million marching with one voice, and ten 
Times these ten million in antiphony. 
Oh God, oh Beauty, One in One and All, 
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Appear! My eyes seek for your naked face, 
My heart for your great laboring bosom seeks ! 

Man stands with his arms stretched out toivard 
the Field of Bright Space which is revealed to him 
more and more. The Seven Spirits rise, throwing 
down about him their ghastly light, and chanting 

Seven trees in the garden of beauty, 
Seven trees in the garden of chaos, 
Man in the garden of beauty and chaos. 
Death in the hlies, doom in the roses. 

Far down the Field of Bright Space, ascending 
and descending the lustrous stairway thai leads up 
the Mystic Mountain, and going out to the Suns. 
the Basket Carriers are seen. They sing: 

SONG OF THE BASKET CARRIERS 

Gems and blood we carry in our baskets, 

Light from the eyes of the Eternal, 

Life from the heart of the Supreme, 

And the hunger and the hunger and the hunger 

Of the suns we feed. 

Our ways are outward and inward, 
Woven ways among the universes. 
Gold lives upon the soles of our feet, 
Gold is pressed into our paths: 
The spaces are in flower with our going. 
164 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



The lips of the suns are heavy with hunger, 
And there is no Umit to the Beauty of God : 
Gems and blood we carry in our baskets. 

MAN 

And my lips, too, have tasted of this blood! 
Upon my heart I know the power of life 
Pressing its inner throbbings to my pulse. 
Until I move commingled with all things. 
Even so I feel the quality of God 
Which is to give from His sole self that being 
Whose myriad blooms darken the diamond edges 
Of the white mountains. — Here I lift my soul 
To the uttermost by one quick thought that there 
Is yet a vaster thing than the uttermost, 
A heart within it all. — On either hand 
The gathering spaces rise, charged with loud suns 
Whose cataracts mouth thunder in the deeps. 
Yonder the lovely mountain lifting up 
The beauty of this field to cloudy light; 
And here this garden rich among the spaces, 
Set with broad trees like rooted constellations 
Grown close with gold. Here roam two mighty 

flocks 
Deep-smothering their shining lips among 
The glooms of rounded lily fruits and shades 
Shook from thick roses. Fat their silver sides 
Pant with their feeding on the nectar flowers, 
165 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



And fat their golden bellies moving low 
Among the oleander blooms. Perchance 
These two who watch them, seeming strange to 

me — 
And yet not strange — may speak and tell me all 
That vision brings me here so marvelously. 
Upon the brow of one there sits a frail 
Clear brilliance, like remembered starlight fallen 
Pale to the eyes of immortal infancy 
Wide in their aeon gloom; and on the brow 
Of that one other flows a light of deep 
And pitiful yearning. — 

There breaks in a Voice chanting from the 
Garden. 

Saffron sleep folds long mist 

Over the eyes of the dreamer, 

And seals the lips of the mist with amber: 

Dream, dream, dream. 

On earth there was a yellow war 

Between the Flesh and the Spirit. 

Neither was whole, but each the bigot 

Struck, and the tender breast of the other 

Winced like the nightshade apple, 

Madragora's sweet full apple. 

When the fisted frost strikes up from the fen-land 

Under her canopy low and green. 



166 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



There were stars in the cool of heaven, 

Thoughts of God and the pale hereafter, 

Of spirits folding like valley lilies, 

Their perfumes mixing, their sweets entwined; 

Thoughts of life in the one forever. 

Anthems lifted aloft the stars. 

Bearing in whiteness of chanted hosannas 

The two made one to the last high union: 

Two lost together and one forever with One. 

There was the hot, hot musk of the rose 
Bare on the forest path beneath bare feet. 
The breasts of women close-cinctured together 
Brewing a perfume mad and wild. — 
Dewy banks of violet, violet and asphodel. 
Matted in the morning, strangling in the sunshine 
Of loosened hair and sunshine. 
And in the odors of the tigers that hurled and 

tumbled there. 
Nard and sweat and lilies pale, 
Sweat and nard and roses red, 
On the earth, on the earth; 
For the mind of God was bleeding. 
And His heart was white and wistful. 
When He wrought the miracle. 
The miracle imperfect of the great love that 

made it, 
Costing Him the expiation of the aions and the 

cosmos. 

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The Garden of Seven Trees 



As the Voice is chanting, the two Shepherds ap- 
proach Man. One is gowned in a simple garment of 
silver, the other in a one-piece garment of pale gold. 
They seat themselves silently beside Man and so 
remain until the Voice has ceased. Their eyes are 
heavy with love; there is a great wistfulness in their 
faces. 

MAN 

I seem to know you by a memory in 
My mind and by an echo in my heart 
Returning fresh from white crags sweet with snow. 
It was not in that first eternity 
When my soul slept among the high blue foun- 
tains, 
Dreaming its aeon music; no, nor when 
In earlier birth I drew apart from one 
All-multitudinous chaos cradling me. 
Was it when nebulous glory whirled itself 
Into a system that rose like swift larks. 
Gold breasted, silver voiced against the dawn? 
I can not tell; but of me there is much 
That sought you somewhere sometime heretofore. 

GOLDEN SHEPHERD 

Immortal is the essence of your heart. 
Drawing its nature far down gleaming beds 
Of God-struck waters. In those mighty days 
When God reached out His hand and felt the chaos 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



Plunge willful, wild with strange got power, nor 

heeding 
Whence came its fullness, then God closed His 

hand 
And held the infant forces, fashioned them 
In serviceable form, and peopled them 
With beings who might joy to recognize 
Their maker, unrebellious, full of worship. 
Thus wrought He; and I heard a voice that said, 
"Come forth, for we have now made man, no 

senseless 
Property revolting under law, but such 
An one as cased in a sweet substance may 
Companion me. And therefore now look well 
That nothing of this lovely creature go 
Unshepherded. His thoughts of soul I make 
Your care; as golden sheep they shall arise 
From out the l.,ovely World, and you 
Shall pasture them among the Seven Trees." 
So Lord Jehovah spoke ; and much of you 
Already here I shepherd in my flock; 
For of your immortality partakes 
Each golden impulse of your living soul. 

MAN 

With you, then, are the glories of my soul. 
Which, passing from me, could not die or yet 
Forget their parentage. Converse I held 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



In unsubstantial mystery with these things, 
Nor lost a thought, even to my God-head, of 
Things born in me. And so I knew a sure 
Eternity begun in me, nor lost 
The parting breath, the wonder and the clamor 
Of my sweet worship. This my entity, 
Tho centered here, already wings the spaces. 
Myriad voiced, and tender in its multitude 
To one whole Beauty. Like a wind my soul, 
Dropped in a million flowers, arising thence 
In essences of dew toward one Sun. — 
And you, whose brow a patient sorrow bears, 
Where has my being found its love of you? 

SILVER SHEPHERD 

Where substances were wrought into first beauty, 
Delightfully shapen with fancy supreme, even 

where 
Your being found its loveliness of form. 
Within the sweet hands of the Lord. Then spoke 

He: 
"Come forth, for we have wrought a mansion fair 
For Man, and veined it up and down with life, 
Packed it with fruit, and set a light within 
It, set our nard upon its altars, set 
Our harps of ages playing there with might 
Of psalms. Take of this living mansion now 
The eternal care, or until such a time 
170 



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As well may come." So speaking, down he smote 

His hand upon my forehead, and left there 

The finger furrows of His agony. — 

The infinite impulse of your unsouled heart 

I tend, my silver flock among the trees. 

MAN 

I had a lesser sense for such a thought. 
Yet rendered sacred by the wine it dipped in, 
The blood-thorn sacrament, the midnight sweat 
Of the Great Heart. — Was it not possible, then. 
In all the lengths of time to sour the sweet 
Of flesh? And cherishes God in silver cask 
The panting agonies of lily night? — 
Now firm completeness closes round my faith 
That I shall know this Beauty and this God 
While so I stand, my myriad self inmixed 
Already with the universes which 
Must live; for I have tasted life with them, 
And been their foot, their eye, their mouth, their 
tongue. 

Now sounds from the deeper garden the song 
of the flocks, sung in antiphonal manner. Man 
stands during the song; the Shepherds remain bowed. 



171 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Song of the Flocks 

SILVER SHEEP 

When Into the eye of God 

There fell out of the blackness 

Pale forms of beauty, 

Then knew we our being. 

Swift was the starlight 

Over the bosoms of burning orchids : 

The white desert ached at our birth. 

GOLDEN SHEEP 

When God was utterly weary 

And had put His head beneath the deeps 

That no glory might assail Him, 

Then a dream grew in the spaces, 

Touched the outward failing foam that rims with 

beauty 
The immensities, and all that was 
Left wild of God, and so descended, 
Downward till it made a pillow beneath the deeps. 
The brows of God were bare; 
And the great eyes closed 
Were more lovely than wild calla-lilies 
Rare and budding full. 
The brows of God were bare. 
Bare as cliffs of diamond mountain. 
And the great eyes closed 

Were two lovely conyons mounded full of lilies, 
172 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



When the dream beneath the deeps 
Rose and smote along His brows 
Like gold thunder out of morning: 
Then we knew and had our being. 

SILVER SHEEP 

Forms were we of pale created beauty, 
Made from the delicate atoms of God's vision 
When vision lingered young within His mind; 
Forms were we in pure wing-living silver, 
Loosened into shape by bladed fire 
Cleaving our outlines close and free. 
Then from the vision outward flashing 
We sought the cataracts of the great Red Sun, 
Plunged with its pulse, smote out at last 
Our loveliness into a heart lesser than God's, 
And yet so roomed and living so by love. 
Thence warmed again by some strange passion 
Stirring its arms about us, we rose, fire in our breasts, 
And cooled our breasts against the cataract 
Until down-warded here by unwilling angels. 
But still our passion moves us, and we know our 

ways are outward, 
Somewhere among the universes blown and far 

and wild. 

GOLDEN SHEEP 

When the dream smote. 

And the thunder broke white on the brow of the 
Lord; 

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The Garden of Seven Trees 



When the deeps rolled 
And lifted the lilies above His great eyes, 
Our elements gathered from the far-fringing foam 
Of the out-going measureless ocean, 
Were struck by His spirit fresh from its rest, 
Sanctified, glorified, rendered eternal. 
W^e not from the mind of the master Creator, 
But high from his spirit dream-struck in the high- 
est 
With tender and infinite morning. 
So floated we forth, down the white winds wander- 
ing, 
To the Lovely World in the iris abyss; 
And there achieving our wonder were loosened, 
Returning like glances of light to the spaces, 
Led here to the shepherded flock of the Garden, — 
But yearning for the out-flowing measureless 

foam 
Of the ocean immense with an infinite being. 

SILVER SHEPHERD 

Hear you these chants.'^ Oh, brother! 

GOLDEN SHEPHERD 

Yes, I hear. 

SILVER SHEPHERD 

And have we tended these in vain? Their being 
Was elsewhere fashioned and yearns elsewhere to 
Be going. 

174 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



GOLDEN SHEPHERD 

Useless then our mounded pastures, 
Our silver lily fruits, our golden apples 
Of the musk rose; useless then our hearts 
Blood-warmed and spirit-fired, our tender 
Ministrations.— Behold the universes 
Sweep, their ways are outward, and these go. 
In vacant richness shall our pastures bloom, 
Smothering down to ashes. Wet with blackness 
The flowers that were silver on your pathways, 
The flowers that were golden by my footfall! 

MAN 

Are these flocks then of me? Of my own flesh 
And of my spirit? 

GOLDEN SHEPHERD 

Yes, but first of God. 

MAN 

And am I one with these and so eternal? 
So is my God eternal? I like Him? 
And I shall measure out myself thru all 
The eternities, never wasting tho 
Upbuilding? And He, eternal in division, 
Eternal and eternal and eternal, 
But beautiful in all? Shall I be lost 
At last with Him and all be lost in all? 
175 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Or shall each live with all and each be all? 
Look! down the field of Space a lovelier light, 
And those strange beings toiling up the mount, 
And here a glory moving in the Garden, 
Thru all the upper spaces pathways gleaming, 
The universes forming with their bosoms outward, 
And the thunder and the wonder, a nd the foam 
Dashing far out where the black oceans toil 
Against the uttermost. My God is here ! 

Man and the Shepherds bow while a great chant 
rises from the deeps. 

CHANT OF THE UNIVERSES 

We, we the elements of chaos, 

Brayed by almighty pestels 

In the pit of the eternal. 

Roar, roar, roar. 

The abysses are our coarse- voiced trumpets. 

Black-throated, twisted round with cobalt, 

Full sounding craters of eruption, — 

We roar. 

Now is to be born a new cosmos. 
Now is to be born a new cosmos, 
Born out of fury, born into beauty,- — 
We roar and come. 

There is a great movement among the universes. 
The Basket Carriers are seen rushing back out of 
176 



The Garden of Seven Trees 

the spaces and hastening up into the mists of the 
mountain; the clouds break away higher and higher. 

MAN 

"Now is to be born a new cosmos" out 

Of the old chaos ! So the master cycle 

Swings beneath my view. Now shall I see 

Born Beauty sweet from the womb arise 

To hail its Father with the voice of storms. 

So worked the miracles to this one age, 

Brewed, wrought, and labored to this only hour. 

Such voices yet shall rise to God as only 

The voice of man has little echoed in 

The transepts of his temples. Hear! The voice! 

The VOICE OF GOD sounding from the Mountain. 
Man, know you the being from whose self you are. 
What wild high pilgrimage now brings you here. 
Corse-fettered still, striding these mighty ways? 
Why tempt you now My bosom with that form 
Which love could yield only in dreams, and which 
Love hungers for till dreams returning bring 
His children to the Father? Speak to me. 

MAN 

I thought thee awful, found thee kindly, voiced 
Humbly, with simple mercy loving me. 
So this great moment but a little be 

177 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Delayed, I'll set my full presumption forth, 
My agony, and the purpose wrought from it. — 
Lovely the world you gave me for my home. 
The emerald and the snow in season mixing 
Their pleasant beauty, and the far lands hung 
With misty seas slow heaving thru the morning 
Their breasts of vert and azure, perfect in sleep, 
And waking, tipt with chastened pearl ! My God, 
I loved that earth, love still; but something 
Along my temples held my eyes wide, wide 
As in strong madness, and I saw the nations 
Rush armed together, until a beast rose up. 
Fang-jawed, jowls oozing blood and stench along 
His hairy breast, a monster risen up. 
And man an evil smell beneath a mist 
That, yellow seething, boiled along the world. — 
My heart was packed in torn and rotted heat. 
And sick beyond sick with terror. Oh, my God, 
Then I remembered thy sweet waters, rose 
And washed myself, considered thy untoiling 
Lilies, and weeping all my tears until 
The boiling tempest of my spirit lay 
Cooled in their chalices, I swooned in prayer : 
And in my swoon I passed, longing for thee. 
Even to this place. 

THE VOICE OF GOD 

My son, your love has been 
Of great spirit, and an understanding 
178 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



Of high things has passed into your heart. 
Yet, being but a part of me you well 
Mistake the purpose of the whole; for, lo, 
Death is the sweet food at the root of life. 
And in me nothing lost. Those powers I lose 
Upon each other labor but in me, 
Working my being. Manifold immense 
Disasters to your eye those gracious means 
Thru which I gain my consummation. — Now 
Move to the throne ground of Bright Space 
The summoned Universes and the Powers, 
There to work out a goodlier will of mine 
For a broader cycle of eternity. 
Mark now the body of doom riding her 
Catafalque, and rising thence like May 
In your own Southern mountains. In this hour 
I shall redeem the Immensities. Behold ! 

At this the Suns banded into Universes swing 
in from Space, assembling mightily before the Mys- 
tic Mountain. The Abysses are left dark and hol- 
low, sounding with raw thunder. Above the Garden 
the Seven Spirits hover, striking a saffron light from 
their wings; and in the Garden the flocks trample 
about in awful agitation. A change begins to work 
upon the Seven Trees, and here and there a fountain 
of blackness spurts out over the Garden from the 
walling space around. 



179 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



MAN 

Seeking for Beauty I find but Truth. I gaze 
Too long upon the rose, the Universes 
Cramp, and mighty symbolisms strike 
Broadly across the infinite. The face 
Of God for which I seek becomes a voice 
Speaking a common language, and the worlds 
Are summoned as autumn leaves ; as winter fruits 
The Universes pile before the Mount. 
The Spaces are left dark to the marching feet 
Of aby ssmal thunders ; the black ocean shakes 
Her flood beyond her shores; and my own world 
Remaining only in the Spaces, gleams 
With arrowy jet, with shafted ebony tipped 
Dark diamond. 

GOLDEN SHEPHERD 

Our flocks are struck by the 
Black fountains. 

SILVER SHEPHERD 

Let us among them, still 

To be watching in the midst of the Garden. 

MAN 

Pray you with me detain yourselves 
In love, and let us lay our lips together 
Upon the breast of this great moment, and 
Feed from the source magnificent of life. 
180 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



GOLDEN SHEPHERD 

We go to the deeps of the Garden. He who feeds 

Upon the truth of mystery, must feed 

Alone. 

SILVER SHEPHERD 

We go to the deeps of the Garden. If there come 
A moment past the might of sufferance, 
And you would join us, join us as you may, 
In prayer among the loveliness of one 
Eternity a moment wrecked, and cast 
Like Pity underneath the winds of Space. 

{They go.) 

MAN 

Like mighty captives stride the worlds along, 
Their naked loveliness like the breasts of men 
Blushing with power; and hugely interlocked 
Are they, in heavy armies bound by chains 
Circling in thick coils of power. Now rushes down, 
Swift from the unknown reaches, a great wind, 
A cough of chaos storming full of fire; 
Now hurl the Universes breast to breast 
Their leagued ranks, their heavy bulks up-tossed 
Among the tempests: huge their battle rage! 
Some blackened lie rough-clashing in their chains, 
Like sea-sunk skeletons of galley slaves 
When thunders moil the oceans deeply down; 
And others rear like maddened mountains blowing 
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The Garden of Seven Trees 



Steep wrath to heaven, till their bulks consumed 
Collapse with mighty clapping of their sides. — 
And there the flocks with eyes hot carbuncle 
Break from the weeping Shepherds, and with 

flanks 
Striking their silver and gold into red fury, 
Unlike the things they were, rush far beyond 
The Garden, down the Bright Field, leaping 
On fire-spitting hoofs until they hurl themselves 
Into the wilder flame. On high there sweep, 
Beyond the great trees rising, the Seven Spirits 
Screaming an iron wail, fearfully charging 
Upward into the blackness. Inrushing chill 
Breaks black and green upon the trampled flowers 
Blue-cut by hoofs, like flesh all numb and dead. 
The great trees shake like piles of ashy ice 
Upbuilded by ocean tides, and struck again 
Until their moaning heights sink into foam. — 
Oh, God, is this Thy silence.'* Shall I, too, go 
Into the deeps of the Garden, mix myself 
With the most lovely thing that ruin ever 
Blasted? Immensities redeemed — the greater 
Comes — but beauty lies so near and low ! 
Yet shall I wait the forming of new suns 
In splendor swinging highly, and all Space 
Fair blooming with these roses and these lilies; 
And I shall wrestle thru a greater chaos 
To a greater doom than this. Amen ! Amen ! 



<im 



The Garden of Seven Trees 



SONNET 

Out of the drifting years there comes to me 
A slow sad seriousness of mind and heart, 
Child-wondering, and musing over art. 
Too tender, most. Some full eternity 
Falls closely round, and yet I can not free 
Its awful shapes, nor know God's mind, nor know 
The form of Love, that I may look and go. 
Saying with faith, "This thing is Beauty — see!" 

Even such my doubting. Yet upon my soul 
Is struck a stern commandment. A great voice 
Is on the hills, a summons on the deep. 
Be it then so that I search out the goal 
That's set for me, not fearful of the choice 
Or failing ever That good will to keep. 



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